Author: Smile Team

• SIFFCY to feature 150 films, encouraging talent from all over the world
• Best works from 50 countries to be featured during week-long extravaganza from 9-15 December
• Event to be attended by global cinema icons, including Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson

New Delhi, 19 November 2019: Bringing the best of world’s cinema for children to the national capital, Smile International Film Festival for Children and Youth (SIFFCY) is all set to launch its fifth edition in December.

One of Delhi’s most stellar events for children and youth-SIFFCY- will feature varied genres and categories of films from all across the globe, roping in the healthy competition in the infotainment industry as it acknowledges the efforts of the worthy with awards. The festival, screening from 9 – 15 December, will curate 150 films in 30 languages from thousands of international films and short-features from around the world.

The fifth edition of the unparalleled film festival will emphasise on applauding young talent and boosting their spirits as it features nine films from – Poland, USA, Cyprus, Australia, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany, Canada and India – in the International Competition Feature Section. Five of these films will be recognised and qualify for the other award categories, including the ECFA Award, the CIFEJ Award & the FCCI Award (Film Critics Circle Award).

The complete list of the feature film official election includes:

• Binti by Frederike Migom (Belgium)
• Phantom Owl Forest by AnuAun (Estonia)
• Fight Girl by Johan Timmers (The Netherlands)
•  Inventing Tomorrow by Laura Nix (USA, India, Indonesia, Mexico)
• Underdog by Seong-Yun OH and Chun-Baek Lee (South Korea)
• Measure of a Man by Jim Loach (USA)
•  Too Far Away by Sarah Winkenstette (Germany)
• Here My Village by Abas Aram (Iran)
• Musk by Vinod Kamble (India)

SIFFCY will appreciate several notable works of the artisans of cinema as it presents the International Competition Shorts Section, further including 18 different films from 13 different countries. Admiring the masterpieces created by students, the event will feature the Next-Gen Section, a category curated to recognise the endeavour of students, presenting 16 films made by film students from 10 countries.

Mr. Jitendra Mishra, Festival Director, SIFFCY, says, “As usual, this year’s festival will treat the audience with more than 150 films from different genres including both live action and animation from more than 40 countries. Diverse array of compelling feature films, documentaries, short films, includes variety of films on important global issues like climate change, immigrants, war and peace, friendship, family values will be showcased. While the best of children films from USA, UK, Canada & major European countries like Germany, Sweden, France, Norway & Czech Republic will be celebrated, we have also curated films from culturally diverse countries like Columbia, South Africa, Iran & Korea. We also have several interesting Indian regional films in the slate this year.”

Influencing the new-age generation and conveying messages of substance through the films enacted and curated by children, the festival will comprise of a Take One Section, showcasing 36 different short films made by children from 20 different countries.

Mr. Santanu Mishra, Executive Trustee of Smile Foundation & Chairman, SIFFCY, says, “We are quite proud of the film listings and are excited to showcase it. Jitendra has put in a lot of hard work to bring good content from all over the world.”

Renowned stars from across the world, including Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson, will come together to form the international jury and panel at the event.

Website – www.smilefoundationindia.org

With international funding slowing and domestic fundraising taking off strongly, local NGOs have to up their game to win hearts, minds and donations from local companies. A five-day workshop by Smile Foundation in association with Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy in Chennai seeks to help organizations crack the local fundraising.

Chennai, November 26, 2019: With its commitment to work towards ‘Civic Driven Change’, Smile Foundation has teamed up with Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy to bring in best practices and help grassroots organizations take forward their development mandate. Through a unique classroom learning course, NGOs get to hear from experts on how to tackle fundraising issues and comply with the processes of due diligence from stakeholders to avoid abrupt shut downs.

This is particularly important in today’s context as over the past decade or so dependence on foreign funding for national NGOs has been erratic and is on a slowdown. As per a recent report, there has been a decline of 40 percent in foreign funds for NGOs over the past five years. This coupled with global economic slowdown and emergence of corporate social responsibility and individual giving, local organizations are looking for new ways to raise resources and support for the causes they champion within the national markets.

Only recently, around 1800 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India have been banned by the government from accepting foreign funds for allegedly violating norms of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). “In our experience of over 16 years in the sector, we have realized that most of the times, the smaller organizations lack the basic know how of dealing with funds,” said Santanu Mishra, co-founder and trustee, Smile Foundation.

“Sometimes they don’t know how to raise resources, and many a times when they have funds, they don’t know the compliance processes. Foreign funds are shrinking due to valid reasons –corporates are more systematic in how they want to invest, NGOs by and large lack the skills and the attitude to complement the policies of Government in place by either improving or setting them anew,” he said.

“Self-Sustainability is a big question for these smaller NGOs. Change the Game Academy (CtGA) addresses these issues through its Classroom Course approach by focusing on the aspect of local fundraising. The course brings forth a paradigm shift to the participants that local fundraising is a more sustainable option in the long run and they leave the room equipped with skill-set, ready with an event plan to fundraise,” said Gargi Kapoor, In-charge, CtGA, India.

“These workshops help civil society to rethink their business models, think strategically about its financial models and adopt new and innovative approaches that will help the sector maintain its independence and still be sustainable. The idea exchanges that happen through the workshops empower these smaller units with long term and short-term fundraising goals,” she explained.

There is a growing trend in donations by individual philanthropists. They have ensured that the role of private funding continues to grow despite slowing foreign fund inflows. Similarly, funding under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is maturing, which has seen a growth of 12 percent in recent times, but local NGO’s need to explore ways to also find alternate means of fundraising.

The answer for smaller NGOs is on finding financial stability, which is basically about diversifying financial resources to have a healthy mix of long and short-term funding, CSR donations, foreign and local donors as well as internally generated resources by events, fundraisers, etc.

With most organizations that are working at the state level and rooted in the community, the understandingof financial stability is poor and lack of mentoring makes is difficult to sustain with changing scenarios. Change the Game Academy (CtGA) through its classroom course program aims to empower smaller nongovernment organizations in methods to become self-reliant and sustainable, and help them understand the dynamics of being self-sufficient and self-reliant.

Jaya Shroff: Smile Foundation: jaya.shroff@smilefoundationindia.org | 9818194294

About Smile Foundation:

Smile Foundation is a national level development organisation reaching out to more than 600,000 underprivileged children, youth and women directly every year through more than 250 welfare projects on subjects such as education, healthcare, youth employability, and women empowerment across 25 states of India. Adopting a life cycle approach of development, Smile Foundation focuses its interventions on children, their families and the community.

Website: http://www.smilefoundationindia.org/

Smile Foundation powers development at the grassroots level through Civic Driven Change that brings together corporates, local government bodies, individuals, institutions, media and larger civic society. The collaborative and partnership based approach has brought about sustainable change in the lives of more than 1.5 million children and families in its journey with a sharp focus on girl child education and empowerment.

Mumbai, November 29 2019: In its endeavor to continue facilitating change for an equal society by supporting girl child’s education, Smile Foundation, under its flagship Swabhiman Scholarship program organized a day-long Learning Fest for 80 Smile scholars in Mumbai.

The day-long event saw these 80 girls come together from all parts of Maharashtra to celebrate their academic achievements. The Smile scholarship programme helps academically bright girls, studying in schools and colleges continue their education.

“Starting from career counseling, yoga sessions, health awareness sessions, body awareness workshops, these girls are given life-skill training to uncover their true potential,” said Seema Kumar, national lead, Swabhiman, Smile Foundation.

“The learning fest gives these young girls from the underserved strata an opportunity to girls for breaking out of their cultural shells. Through interactive and self exploration workshops they learn to express themselves. With help from experts, they hone their personality, interpersonal relationships and career choices.”

The sessions help the scholars to learn to assert their rights in the family, in the community and in social settings and to enable them to make genuine choices over the kinds of lives they wish to lead in the near future.

Speaking on this occasion, Mr. Santanu Mishra, co-founder and executive trustee, Smile Foundation said, “Through Swabhiman, SMILE seeks to enable girl children realize their potential and also give wings to their dreams. These dreams can only be realized when these girls belonging to the marginalized community are given full educational support by way of funds.”

“Smile Foundation is committed to overcoming the pressing challenges of gender discrimination, women’s uneven access or limited access to resources and gender-based violence. We believe that education holds the key to empowering women in all walks of life.”

The program identifies adolescent girls and women from the community and develops them into Change Agents, who in turn actively contribute to the community mobilization process.

Wide disparities are existent in Indian education; data by UNICEF suggests for every 100 boys enrolled in secondary education, there are 81 girls enrolled.

Swabhiman scholarship program started in 2006, helps academically bright girls, studying in schools and colleges continue their education.

Jaya Shroff: Smile Foundation: jaya.shroff@smilefoundationindia.org | 9818194294

About Smile Foundation:

Smile Foundation is a national level development organisation reaching out to more than 600,000 underprivileged children, youth and women directly every year through more than 250 welfare projects on subjects such as education, healthcare, youth employability, and women empowerment across 25 states of India. Adopting a life cycle approach of development, Smile Foundation focuses its interventions on children, their families and the community.

Website – www.smilefoundationindia.org

New Delhi, 9 December 2019: The fifth edition of the Smile International Film Festival for Children and Youth (SIFFCY), supported by BookASmile, opened here on Monday with a screening of award winning Belgian feature film “Binti,” which marks the directorial debut of filmmaker Frederike Migom.

The film centers on a 12-year-old girl from Congo living in Belgium who enjoys vlogging and aspires to fame. But when police raid her home to deport her and her father, she finds her dream almost crushing. Escaping the police, Binti meets Elias and the two become friends. While Binti helps Elias to vlog about his ‘save-the-okapi-club’, she hatches the perfect plan: her dad has to marry Elias’s mom, so they can stay in Belgium.

Jitendra Mishra, Festival Director, SIFFCY said, ““There are more than 250 million immigrants in the world which is almost 3.5% of the global population and it’s an important topic to discuss among the upcoming generation. We want our children to be aware of such global issues and cinema is the right medium I believe. Binti is an emotional story of immigrant father and daughter that talks about this serious topic of immigrants in a lighthearted and entertaining manner.”

The film which has travelled across festivals around the globe has beenwinning several awards and accolades including the prestigious UNICEF & Grand Prix award.

Santanu Mishra, Executive Trustee of Smile Foundation and Chairman, SIFFCY, said in a statement: “It is an extremely important subject told from the children’s perspective. Year on year, it is our endeavor to being in best of world cinema to India. With such a majestic range of films across genres we are sure to keep our young audiences engaged all through the week.”

Other big award winning films which will be premiered during the festival are Phantom Owl Forest by AnuAun (Estonia), Fight Girl by Johan Timmers (The Netherlands), Inventing Tomorrow by Laura Nix (USA, India, Indonesia, Mexico), Underdog by Seong-Yun OH and Chun-Baek Lee (South Korea), Measure of a Man by Jim Loach (USA), Too Far Away by Sarah Winkenstette (Germany), Here My Village by Abas Aram (Iran), Musk by Vinod Kamble (India) among others.

For the fourth year in a row, the film festival is supported by BookMyShow’scharity initiative – BookASmile. Commenting on the collaboration, Farzana CamaBalapnde, Head – BookASmile said, “We believe in giving underserved beneficiaries the best entertainment experience always. This partnership with Smile Foundation is an extension of our mission to bring powerful and meaningful cinema for social change to 5,000 beneficiaries from NGOs and marginalized communities, in this case, children and youth.”

Also present at the launch were John Stevenson – Director, Kung Fu Panda, Mohsen Chiniforoushan – Secretary-General of CIFEZ, Felix Vanginderhuysen – Founder, Secretary-General of European Children’s Film Association, Julia Jarl – Festival Director, BUFF Film Festival, Sweden, MitsuoTahira – Founder and Director, Tokyo Kinder Film Festival, and Mohsen Chiniforoushan – Secretary-General of CIFEZ.

Like previous years, SIFFCY brings global exposure through good cinema to the young audiences. The week long film festival will have film making workshops, panel discussions with an objective to engage, educate and empower our children and youth.

The festival, spanning from December 9-15 will take place at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi.

https://www.ecfaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ECFA-Journal-02-Binti-interview.pdf

https://kwassafilms.com/binti/?lang=en

For more information on SIFFCY 2019: http://siffcy.org/siffcy-2019.html

For media queries/ interviews:

Contact: Jaya Shroff: 9818194294 / jaya.shroff@smilefoundationindia.org

About SIFFCY:

SIFFCY (Smile International Film Festival for Children & Youth) is a special film platform devoted to a greater appreciation of meaningful cinemas made for children and youth which can bring change in the society by showcasing those films, supporting emerging filmmakers, recognizing the pioneers and leaders of the similar industry and by promoting the diverse perspectives of Good World Cinema. It caters to young people (aged 6 to 25) with just about every level of interest in film, whether to watch and enjoy, create their own work or take things a stage further and find out more about a career in the film or television industry.

The week-long annual Film Festival takes place at the Sirifort Auditorium, New Delhi, India during December every year. It attracts filmmakers, artists, Industry professionals and audience members from across the globe.

About Smile Foundation:

Smile Foundation is a national level development organisation reaching out to more than 600,000 underprivileged children, youth and women directly every year through more than 250 welfare projects on subjects such as education, healthcare, youth employability, and women empowerment across 25 states of India. Adopting a life cycle approach of development, Smile Foundation focuses its interventions on children, their families and the community.

Website – www.smilefoundationindia.org

About BookASmile:

India’s leading entertainment destination BookMyShow launched its charity initiative BookASmile in 2014 with a vision to support special causes and enrich the lives of the less fortunate across India through entertainment-led experiences. BookASmile invests a lot of energies to create an inviting community to ensure that they can be privy to opportunities, by incorporating into their lives, activities and experiences from across genres like Cinema, Sport, Theatre, Music & Arts. The BookASmile initiative has been integrated within the BookMyShow App and website. With BookMyShow’s vast customer base, the initiative has been raising funds for special causes whereby every consumer can choose to contribute from Re.1/- per ticket – to a maximum of Rs. 5/- per transaction towards charity. For more information, please visit: https://in.bookmyshow.com/donation/