The maiden edition of the International Nepali Film Fare Academy Award (INFFAA) will take place in Seoul, South Korea, in February, 2018, the organisers announced during a function held in the Capital on Monday.

The event is organised jointly by the Non-residential Nepali Association of South Korea and Box-office Group of Kathmandu. During the announcement event, the organisers also unveiled the official trophy of the Award function. 

 “The film award is announced with two motives: first is obviously to honour the deserving cine artists working in the Nepali film industry. That will be done fairly and without any prejudice, since we are not the insiders of the film industry, but observing it from a certain distance,” said Yagya Raj Sedhai, chief of the Box-office Group, Kathmandu. Organising film awards outside of the country has been a trend embraced by several organisers over the past few years. Now, INFFAA has announced that their maiden function will be held in South Korea. “A large Nepali community currently resides in South Korea, and the number is on the rise by the day. We thought that taking the award to South Korea would to some extent be able to instill a sense of intimacy to those migrant workers. We also want to seek opportunities to expand the film market over there,” Sedhai said. 

INFFAA will have 20 categories in total, in which Nepali films released over the year 2017 can compete.