Mumbai, Oct 17 (IANS) IFP (Formerly India Film Project), one of the world’s leading festivals for all things Creativity X Culture, hosted the second day of its much-talked-about fourteenth season on October 13 at Mehboob Studio, Mumbai.

One of the concluding sessions of the festival brought together an outstanding panel of rising stars, Sparsh Shrivastava, Tanya Maniktala, Abhay Verma, and Pratibha Ranta for an inspiring session, ‘Stars of Tomorrow’.

Sparsh and Pratibha won audiences’ hearts as Deepak and Jaya in ‘Laapataa Ladies’, while Tanya turned heads with her exemplary performances in ‘Flames’ and ‘Kill’.

Meanwhile, Abhay delivered show-stealing roles in ‘Safed’ and ‘Munjya’, proving his mettle as a versatile actor. In a candid interaction with Rohini Ramnathan, an acclaimed radio personality, these young actors discussed their breakout movies, opened up about their struggles before carving a niche in the industry, and shared their aspirations for the future.

Recalling his first reaction to the script of Safed, Abhay revealed, “When I read that script, I was 23 years old. And I was scared to read those 27 pages. It scared me so much that maine ekdum se mana kar dia. Maine kaha, ‘Sorry, yeh nahi ho payega.’ But something just stayed. Aur woh director do din tak available nahi they, toh do din tak main hi woh story ke saath tha. And the most affirmative ‘no’ of my life turned out to be the biggest ‘yes’.”

When asked if she fears losing her fame one day, Pratibha pointed out, “To be very honest, maine yeh duniya kabhi dekhi nahi hai. This is for the first time ki main yeh sab experience kar rahi hoon. PR kya hota hai; tum logon se interact kaise karte ho – everything is very new to me. Toh mujhe yeh lagta hai ki... vahanse yahan bhi toh aayein hain na. So just be honest. Do your work. Koi energy hai jo aapke sath function kar rahi hai, agar aap honestly apna kaam kar rahe ho. Aur aap aage bhi jaogey. Just don’t stop learning.”

Sharing her views on personal growth and navigating the film industry, Tanya Maniktala highlighted, “The constant reminder that I keep giving myself is that there is no full stop to learning. Every day, I’m learning something new.”