Celebrating Pride Month - NYIFF 2025 - RipTide and IYKYK (Short)

Rip Tide

Director: Afrad VK
Starring: Swalah Rahman, Faris Hind, Charlie Jean-Guillaume Le Bouffo, Shafeeque Kodinjhi
Run time: 1 hour 23 minutes
Language: Hindi, English
Year Made: 2024
Country: India

Synopsis:
As college life comes to a close, roommates and lovers Suku and Charlie prepare to part ways. They spend their final days together drinking on the beach, discussing literature, making love and taking long drives down deserted roads. A health emergency forces Suku to leave town early, and when he returns following a near-death experience, he finds Charlie leading a spectral existence, intimate to him but invisible to everyone else.

Director: Afrad VK
Afrad VK is an independent filmmaker and writer based in Kerala, India. His debut feature film Riptide, selected for IFFR 2024, began as a diploma film project and progressed into a feature film.

IYKYK

Director: Bonita Rajpurohit
Starring: Bonita Rajpurohit, Heena Thadhani, Aryan Madhavan, Hari Salunke, Akarsh Suresh, Abhas Billore, Raj ShantiRam Shantiram, Numer Sardar
Run time: 17 mins 54 Secs
Language: Hindi
Year Made: 2024
Country: India

Synopsis:

Everyone seems to have a different approach to the elephant in the room; her Gender Identity. Address it or ignore it. No one seems to have a clue how to go about it. We follow a series of dates, Kusum goes on.

Bonita Rajpurohit is an actor & a director. Known for playing the lead in Dibakar Banerjee’s ‘Love Sex aur Dhoka 2’, Bonita’s keen interest lies in youth culture, gen-z lifestyles and filmography of Larry Clarke, Lars Von Trier & Lena Dunham. She began her career in filmmaking as an AD & Editor of the film 'It's All In Your Head' dir. by Dhruv Solanki, followed by a sequel 'Blah Blah Blah' as a co-writer, co-director. She also created two fashion films for 'URBANIC' called 'Pink Is The Mother of All Colours' & 'You Are The New Standard'. She had her official debut as the writer and director with her short 'iykyk' on digital dating that earned her the ‘Best Emerging Indian Filmmaker’ Award at the KASHISH FF and a ‘Special Mention’ at Alpavirama Youth IFF (NID, Ahmedabad). The film has been officially selected at DIFF, PÖFF Shorts (Estonia), Tasveer (Seattle), Iris Prize (UK) & many other film festivals.