Sheena Chohan Steers Industry Dialogue at Mumbai International Film Festival

Actress Sheena Chohan took on a moderator's role at this year's Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), steering two panel discussions that brought together filmmakers, curators, and festival directors from across the globe. She also met with Ashish Shelar, Maharashtra's Minister for Cultural Affairs, during the festival's run.

On June 16, Chohan moderated a panel titled "Are Micro-Dramas the Fast Fashion of Cinema?" The discussion brought together producer Sameer Modi, actress Archana Kavi, actor Ujjwal Chopra, and German director Rafael, who has built a reputation in the micro-drama space. The panel dug into the rise of short-form content and what gets lost - or preserved - when storytelling is compressed for shrinking attention spans. Chohan, drawing on her own acting background, argued that the format may be new, but the fundamentals haven't changed: character, emotional honesty, and narrative craft still carry the weight.

Two days later, on June 18, she led a separate roundtable, "Many Forms, One Vision: Celebrating Diversity in Film Festivals," held for the first time at MIFF. The panel included veteran curators and festival directors Anand Varadaraj, Deepak Beshra, Premendra Mazumdar, Nilotpal Mazumdar, Shaikh Khaja Vali, and Patricia Sanchez Mora, alongside Prakash Magdum, Managing Director of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

With delegates from 46 countries attending this year's festival, the conversation centered on the role festivals play as meeting points for different cinematic traditions and audiences. Chohan told the panel that diversity in film festivals is ultimately about storytelling's capacity to cross language and cultural barriers - pointing out that even when the stories differ, they tend to share a similar aim: widening how people see the world around them.

Chohan also spoke about her own path through the festival circuit, which began with a Best Actress nomination at the Shanghai International Film Festival. She's since appeared in a number of independent films across several languages, with her work screening at festivals including Busan, Dubai, Shanghai, and Kolkata - experience she drew on to make the case for festivals as platforms that keep smaller, independent stories visible.

Distribution remains a sticking point for that kind of cinema, panelists noted. Independent and diverse films often struggle to find audiences once they leave the festival circuit, and participants pointed to festivals as one of the few remaining spaces where such work can still find an audience and spark conversation across borders.

Between the two sessions, Chohan's throughline was consistent: cinema's job isn't just to entertain, but to push perspectives outward and keep cultural dialogue alive.