India’s MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will not take place this year as organisers work to overhaul the event and assemble a new team ahead of a planned return in 2026.
In a statement posted across social media channels, festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur said: “This is to inform you that the 2025 edition of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will not take place as we are in the process of revamping the festival with a dynamic vision and a new team to ensure that the festival returns as a premier showcase for the best of independent, regional and classic cinema from India and around the world.
“We are working diligently to reschedule the festival and will announce the new dates for the 2026 edition as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support.”
It marks the latest setback for the 27-year old festival, organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI).
Founded in 1997 as the Festival of Films – Mumbai, it was sponsored by Reliance Entertainment from 2008 to 2013 but found itself on the verge of closure once that agreement came to an end. After struggling through the 2014 edition, supported by a crowdfunding effort led by Bollywood celebrities, Reliance-owned Jio and Star India came on board to sponsor the festival.
In 2020, the festival was postponed due to the Covid pandemic and returned in 2022 as an online-only edition. It relaunched as an in-person event in 2023 with a fresh focus on South Asian filmmaking, a new festival centre and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as chairperson.
However, Jio’s sponsorship ended with that edition and last year marked the festival’s first without a title sponsor since 2014. This led to a drastic reduction in the number of titles screened, from more than 250 in 2023 to around 110 in 2024. It also saw Dungarpur take on the role as festival director from Anupama Chopra.
Filmmaker Hansal Mehta, whose crime drama The Buckingham Murders opened the 2023 edition, said on X: “It’s a cruel irony that Mumbai draped in the glitz of being India’s financial and cinematic capital cannot keep alive a film festival of its own.
“Abandoned by the self-appointed gatekeepers of cinema who chased shinier stages and safer bets it was left in the hands of a few passionate believers to run on pure faith. And now that fragile flame has been snuffed out. No ceremony. No outrage. Just a slow, silent forgetting. What should have been a cultural cornerstone has been reduced to a footnote – another casualty of apathy dressed as progress.”