Bombay (Maharastra) [India]November 6: Mumbai witnessed a historic moment in cinema and technology when the Mumbai AI Film Festival (MAFF), India’s first and largest AI film festival, unfolded grandly at the Royal Opera House. Hosted by LocalHost x InVideo, MAFF has set a new benchmark for the future of cinema by fusing artificial intelligence with cinematic storytelling.
The one-of-its-kind event brought together some of the biggest names from Bollywood and the world of technology, including Shakun Batra, Ram Madhvani, Tanmay Bhat, Apoorva Mehta, Kunal Kapoor, Karan Anshuman and Vatsal Sheth, who participated as judges, mentors and panelists. Riteish Deshmukh was also present to support the movement and witness the next era of storytelling.
The festival was the brainchild of Hardeep Gambhir and Chandan Perla, two young entrepreneurs who turned an ambitious idea into a national movement in just 25 days. What started as a late-night brainstorm turned into a full-scale festival that attracted 1,270 applicants from across India and abroad.
The final 15 teams, coming from 19 cities and 3 countries, received full sponsorship for travel, accommodation, and AI video generation credits. For eight days (October 25 to November 2), these teams created AI-powered short films that reinvented the art of storytelling.
The opening night of the festival was a spectacle, complete with a humanoid robot greeting celebrities, robotic dogs interacting with guests and a star-studded audience that included executives from Netflix India, JioHotstar and Google. The event went viral on social media, racking up over 4 million video views and 10 million impressions, with #MumbaiAIFilmFestival trending across platforms.
The jury panel comprised acclaimed filmmakers Ram Madhvani, Shakun Batra, Kunal Kapoor and Mukul Deora (Oscar-nominated producer of The White Tiger), who evaluated the entries for creativity, innovation and narrative finesse.
The founding team behind MAFF represents India’s next generation of innovators: Hardeep Gambhir, co-founder of LocalHost and previously part of a Sam Altman-backed startup; Chandan Perla, co-founder of Podcast Circle; Suhas Sumukh, who sold his first company at age 15; Parth Raghav, creator of a lung cancer screening tool as a teenager; Kei Hayashi, who raised $1 million for global tech parties before 20; Vidhi Mittal and Deon Cardoza, co-founders of the Carnival Project; Goku, former creative director of 100xEngineers; and Aryan Yadav, founder of India’s largest student entrepreneurship conclave, with over 70,000 attendees.
With ₹20 lakh in prizes and an exclusive retreat in Japan for the winners, MAFF served as a launching pad for young creators exploring the intersection of AI and art, forming a new creative ecosystem where programmers, filmmakers and dreamers come together to rewrite the rules of cinema.
Hardeep Gambhir, Co-Founder of LocalHost and Curator of MAFF and Chandan Perla, Co-Founder of Podcast Circle and Co-Organizer of MAFF, jointly say:
“The idea was to celebrate AI and the boldness of young filmmakers. Give 21-year-olds the chance to show that storytelling can be moving while being powered by AI. What we witnessed at the Royal Opera House was a collision of worlds: Riteish Deshmukh talking about empathy in algorithms, Tanmay Bhat analyzing humor constructed through machine learning, and Shakun Batra reminding us that ‘human truth’ will always be the north star, no matter the tool. The main effort of the festival was to give children a laptop and an idea to stand shoulder to shoulder with the studios. Because when you democratize creation, you not only change the industry, you also change who can dream.”
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