Mumbai, June 10 (IANS) Deepika Padukone, who joins Anurag Kashyap, Farhan Akhtar and Karan Johar in the board of trustees of the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) film festival, said it was a “wonderful space” to discover fresh talent.

The MAMI film festival had last year faced a lot of hurdles to gather funds. Many prominent personalities had donated substantial amounts for staging the event.

After appointing a new chairperson in Kiran Rao, as well as film critic Anupam Chopra, to infuse life into the festival, it is ready with a new board of trustees that also includes Riteish Deshmukh and Siddharth Roy Kapoor.

“MAMI is India’s leading film festival and I am proud to be part of this festival. It’s a wonderful space to discover and nurture fresh talent, build audiences and interact with other talent from across the world,” Deepika said.

The festival showcases latest cutting-edge independent cinema, art house fare alongside Bollywood, Hollywood and cult international movies.

The 17th edition of the event will be held between October 29 and November 5.