Nepal International Film Festival (NIFF) organized by Nepal Film and Culture Academy (NFCA) kicked off on Thursday at City Hall, Kathmandu.

This is the third edition of the five-day long festival. It is showcasing around 80 films in categories like feature film, documentary, short and animated film. According to chairperson of festival K P Pathak, a total of 600 films from 55 different countries applied for the screening. And in the festival, one can watch 10 international feature films, five Nepali feature films, 35 short films, 15 Nepali short films, eight documentaries and six animated films.

On the second day of the festival, short films and feature films were screened at Tourism Board Hall and City Hall, respectively.

Meanwhile, discussion program in different sessions were also organized at Hotel Radisson, Lazimpat. In the first session, international film makers like Larry Kasanoff, Zack Stentz, Damien de Froberville and Jolyon Hoff discussed on the topic 'Film making in an age of streaming' where Kiran Bhakta Joshi, animator at Hollywood's Disney Studio moderated the discussion.

They informed that international streaming sites are in need of films and, the stories which are local, yet can have a global impact can get their place in such international platforms.

Another subject revolved around content being impactful than market,  where Damien, who works as the executive at Netflix, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Studio expressed, “If you have a topic that world is curious about, then Netflix or Amazon would be interested in them. However, the topic should meet their quality."

Then, Zack Stentz who is the writer of Hollywood movies such as 'Action Men: First Class', 'Thor', etc gave a two hour long class on scriptwriting.

In the film festival, Best feature film will be felicitated with Gautam Buddha Award with USD 1,500. Likewise, Best Documentary will be felicitated with Mount Everest Award with USD 1,000. Similarly, Best Animation and Short Film will be felicitated with Manjushree Award with USD 750, and Bagmati Award with USD 500, respectively.

On Saturday Bollywood Director Prakash Jha will host a master class about film direction.