Archive: Chicago South Asian Film Festival 2014, With Nawazuddin Siddiqui Honored

From the TI archives — this event notice originally ran in September 2014 for a festival that has long since taken place.

The 5th annual Chicago South Asian Film Festival ran September 18–21, 2014, at the Showplace Icon Theatres and Film Row Cinema in Chicago's South Loop.

The headline event was the festival's first-ever SAFA Awards — the South Asian Films in America Awards, created that year to recognize South Asian films and talent on a Chicago platform. The opening-night honoree was Nawazuddin Siddiqui, then fresh off Gangs of Wasseypur, The Lunchbox, and Kick, who received the first SAFA Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. He attended with other guests including Rajat Kapoor, Imaad Shah, and Sendhil Ramamurthy, and took part in the opening-night Q&A.

Founded in 2010 by the Chicago South Asian Arts Council, CSAFF paired screenings with panel discussions, musical performances, tributes, and filmmaker meetups — a full festival experience built on Chicago's South Asian diaspora. A decade later, the festival was still going (the 14th edition in 2023), and the SAFA honors are still handed out. But 2014 was the year it became an awards festival — with the shy star from Budhana, Uttar Pradesh, as its first winner.