BENGALURU: The School Cinema International Film Festival (SCIFF)-2025 got under way at the Delhi Public School, Bengaluru South, on Thursday, marking the start of the eighth edition of India’s largest children’s film festival.
Running from November 14 to 30, the festival will screen over 100 films in more than 20 Indian and foreign languages, reaching 40,000 government schools and over 1,000 private schools nationwide.
The Bengaluru preview event saw more than 350 students attending screenings and interactions with filmmakers, alongside online filmmaking workshops conducted at participating schools.
Students who attended the launch said the festival format exposed them to new ways of learning through cinema. “The short films we watched today showed how a story can educate and entertain at the same time,” said Class 10 student Anindita Shreyas. “In just a few minutes, they made big ideas easy to understand, which is why learning through cinema feels so powerful.”
“Children rarely get to watch the best films because they are only screened at festivals. So we decided to take the festival to them, bringing films directly into schools. That way, every child gets access to high-quality cinema,” said Syed Sultan Ahmed, festival director.
The launch also highlighted the longstanding challenges faced by children’s animation in India. Directors said despite growing interest in children’s content, animated films continue to be treated as secondary, receiving neither adequate funding nor institutional backing.
“Animation here is still not taken seriously. People think it’s just cartoons and not cinema,” said Ketan Pal, a participating director. “Most of us work with extremely limited budgets. Funding is the biggest hurdle, producers don’t want to risk investing in children’s animation.”
Another director, Medha Kulkarni, said the lack of financial support directly affects the quality and quantity of meaningful content. “Animation is expensive, slow, and labour-intensive, but it’s also one of the most powerful storytelling mediums for children. Without proper funding, creators are forced to cut corners or abandon projects altogether,” she said.
The event witnessed the participation of over 1,000 students, educators, and dignitaries, including Nikolai Dann and Alexander Shkolenko, founder and creative producer, respectively, of Zero Plus International Film Festival (Russia).
