Both Parties Backed the Indian Film Festival on the Same Day. The Funding Gap Was Huge.

Labor pledged $600,000 over two years to the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne on 13 August. Later that same day, the Liberal-Nationals pledged $2.8 million over four years. The competing commitments put the festival directly into Victoria’s election campaign.

On 13 August, the Victorian Government announced $600,000 to support two additional years of the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne. Minister for Creative Industries Vicki Ward said: “A strong Victoria is where everyone can contribute, belong and see their stories reflected”. Minister for Multicultural Affairs Paul Edbrooke said: ‘Victoria is home to Australia’s largest, most vibrant Indian community, so it’s fitting we host the biggest celebration of Indian cinema in the Southern Hemisphere.

Later that same day, at the awards night at the Palais Theatre, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson pledged $700,000 a year for four years. The Liberal-Nationals’ commitment totals $2.8 million over four years.

Coverage framed this as two parties competing to back the festival. That is half the story.

What the state used to give

In August 2022, the then Victorian Government announced $3 million over three years for IFFM, including $2.3 million in new funding from that year’s budget. Then Minister for Creative Industries Steve Dimopoulos said Victoria “is home to a proud and vibrant Indian community and the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne presents an unmissable opportunity to celebrate their stories”.

The 2022 package provided $3 million over three years, while Labor’s 2026 election commitment offers $600,000 over two years. The two announcements are different funding packages made in different circumstances, so they should not be treated as a like-for-like measure of annual festival funding.

What can be compared directly are the two 2026 election commitments: Labor has pledged $600,000 over two years, while the Liberal-Nationals have pledged $2.8 million over four years.

The longer record

The festival has taken Victorian money since 2012, its third year, under Liberal Premier Ted Baillieu. Jess Wilson made the point herself at the Palais: “It was a Liberal Government, under the leadership of my friend Ted Baillieu, who backed the vision for the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.”

In 2012, Mind Blowing Films won the Victorian Government tender to deliver the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne. That is $150,000 a year. IFFM Festival Director Mitu Bhowmick Lange is also a VicScreen board member, a position she has held since July 2018, while remaining Director of Mind Blowing Films.

The public record confirms Victorian Government backing since 2012, including a $3 million three-year package announced in 2022 and the competing election commitments announced in 2026.

What the money bought this year

The Victorian Government described the seventeenth IFFM as screening more than 130 films across 38 languages, with regional screenings at Village Cinemas in Geelong, Bendigo and Shepparton. Forty per cent of the films were directed by women.

Rekha received the Excellence in Cinema Award and hoisted the Indian flag at Federation Square on 15 August. Rani Mukerji was Guest of Honour and received an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University. Pankaj Tripathi took Artist of Distinction. Dulquer Salmaan, Rishab Shetty, Kirti Kulhari, Malaika Arora, Manushi Chhillar and Rima Das all attended.

The Victorian Government’s release put expected attendance at approximately 30,000. That is a projection, not a count, and no counted attendance figure has been published.

The festival also ran a low-sensory special screening on 22 August, an IFFM x Melbourne Queer Film Festival Pride Day on 21 August, and an Indian Indigenous Films session at the Wheeler Centre.

The politics underneath

Both funding commitments were announced on 13 August, in the run-up to the 28 November state election, at a festival that had just changed premiers under it. Ben Carroll replaced Jacinta Allan on 28 July after a leadership spill, and his ministry was sworn in on 4 August. IFFM opened nine days later.

Sharanya Sathyanarayanan, writing in Indian Link on 27 August, put the discomfort plainly: “Impact sounds excellent in a speech. Diversity looks better for an election campaign.”

She is not wrong to notice it. But the numbers add a wrinkle her piece does not have. If diversity looks better in an election campaign, it has looked considerably worse in a budget. Labor’s 2026 election commitment is smaller in total and shorter in duration than the Liberal-Nationals’ competing pledge, while the available public record does not establish a complete year-by-year funding comparison with earlier periods.

What this is really about

There is a version of this story where a community celebrates two parties bidding for its attention. There is a better one about what happens between elections.

An arts organisation funded at $1 million a year builds a permanent staff, plans three years out and takes programming risks. One funded at $300,000 a year runs a leaner festival and spends more of its energy on sponsors, of which IFFM has many, including NAB and Remitly.

The Coalition’s four-year offer is the only proposal on the table that would give the festival funding certainty past 2028. Whether that survives an election is a separate question.

Both parties have now put forward different funding commitments for IFFM. The clearest comparison for readers is between the amounts, durations and conditions attached to those two 2026 pledges.