Two weeks ago, J&K's first international film festival wrapped up with 135 films from 41 countries and a prize purse close to a crore. Its centre of gravity was Srinagar; Jammu got a screening leg.
This month, Jammu gets a festival where it is the whole point — and where, for the first time, there is cash specifically for a film made here.
The Jammu Film Festival holds its fifth edition on 28 and 29 September, run by the non-profit Vomedh in association with The Avanti Foundation. The headline change this year is a ₹1 lakh award for Best Local Production. Before any of that, there is a curtain-raiser on Thursday 17 September at 11 am at the Writers Club, Abhinav Theatre — public, and two days away.
What is actually new here
A festival's fifth edition is not news on its own. The ring-fenced local prize is.
Most festivals that come through the region treat regional work as a strand — a J&K Select section, a handful of slots, a nod. A dedicated Best Local Production award with a ₹1 lakh cheque attached is a different signal: it means a film made in Jammu is not competing against a well-funded international submission for the same money.
Festival director Rakesh Roshan Bhat and Vomedh's Rohit Bhat have framed the edition around exactly that. "With the 5th edition, we are taking a significant step towards encouraging regional storytelling," Rohit Bhat said when the edition was announced.
Can I actually submit something?
Yes — that is the part worth taking seriously if you have made anything.
Submissions run through FilmFreeway, the standard international festival submission platform, across three categories: feature films, short films and documentaries. The short-film category is the realistic door for most people reading this. A short is a format a student with a phone, a borrowed mic and a weekend can actually finish, and it is the category where regional festivals routinely programme first-time work.
If you have a film sitting on a hard drive from a college project, this is a live submission target roughly a fortnight out, in your own city, with a local prize attached. That combination does not come round often.
A word on FilmFreeway itself, since it trips up first-time submitters. It is a free account, and you build a single project page for your film — synopsis, runtime, credits, a poster or still, and a private screening link. Once that page exists you can submit it to any festival on the platform, so the effort is front-loaded rather than repeated. What catches people out is the housekeeping: a clean title, a working link that does not expire, and accurate runtime and credits. Festivals do sift on presentation, and an entry that looks unfinished reads as an unfinished film.
Who is behind it
Vomedh is a non-profit, and the festival has built up a small standing team around it. Senior actor Kusum Tikoo has been associated with the festival since its inception, and Amit Wanchoo serves as festival advisor.
One small confusion worth clearing up: you will see the festival referred to both as the Jammu Film Festival (JFF) and the Jammu International Film Festival (JIFF), depending on the outlet. It is the same event, in its fifth edition, on the same dates. The organisers' own domain is jammufilmfestival.com.
What to do on Thursday
The curtain-raiser is the low-commitment way in. It is at 11 am on 17 September at the Writers Club, Abhinav Theatre, and it is where the programme, the schedule and the submission details normally get laid out properly.
If you are weighing up whether to submit, or simply want to know what is screening on the 28th and 29th, that is the hour to give it. Organisers describe the festival's aim as providing a platform for filmmakers, artists, creative professionals and cinema enthusiasts while promoting the cultural landscape of Jammu and Kashmir — which is broad, but the curtain-raiser is where broad turns into a schedule.
The wider point for anyone making films in Jammu
Jammu's problem has rarely been that nobody here makes films. It is that the exhibition and prize infrastructure sits elsewhere, so work made here tends to travel out to be seen rather than be seen at home.
A festival in its fifth year, with a local-production prize and an open international submission route, is a modest but real piece of that infrastructure. It is worth showing up to for that reason alone, whether or not you have anything to enter this year.
There is a second reason to go that has nothing to do with submitting. Festivals are where the people who make things in a city find out who else is making things. A two-day programme in a single auditorium is, in practice, the only setting in Jammu where a cinematographer, an editor, a sound person and someone with a script are reliably in the same room. Crews get assembled at these events far more often than films get funded at them.
For context on what the region's festival season has looked like this month, our coverage of IFFJK — its line-up, its Jammu leg and its closing awards — is on the site.
Before you go
Curtain-raiser: 17 September, 11 am, Writers Club, Abhinav Theatre, Jammu
Festival: 28–29 September 2026, Jammu
Submissions: via FilmFreeway — features, shorts, documentaries
New this year: ₹1 lakh, Best Local Production
One caveat in the interest of not wasting your morning: festival schedules move. Confirm timings against the organisers' own channels before travelling across the city for a specific screening.
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