For the people sitting down for a movie with a bucket of popcorn, cinema is all about entertainment. For the people who make that screening possible, cinema is first and foremost about raising capital, because not a single scene can be shot unless there is money for it coming from somewhere. Also, once a film is made, it has to be sold, so that it can reach audiences.
Neena Lath Gupta, as a former senior officer of the Indian Revenue Service and current founder-director of the Cinévesture International Film Festival in Chandigarh, is well-positioned to understand the need for investment in creativity.
Now in its second year, Cinévesture International Film Festival (20-23 March 2025) is reinventing the marketplace for movies, attempting to change passive investment to active investment.
The previous edition of CIFF had some of the biggest names in Indian cinema, including Bollywood mogul Karan Johar, helping the fledgling festival make its mark.
In an interview with Connected to India, the woman behind CIFF outlines her strategy of expanding and deepening the market for films, while also bringing the best of international cinema to Indian audiences.
Chandigarh has been chosen as the location of this “start-up festival” — as Neena describes it — because it is the kind of city that can serve as an “off-site” for film marketing.
“There is a need for more private equity finance or debt finance [in cinema]”, and Chandigarh has a great strategic location for building a “professional marketplace” for movies, she says.
Watch the full interview with Neena Lath Gupta on the YouTube channel of Connected to India to know her plans of making CIFF a new marketing hub for films.
