Building the website and CRM for PIFFI, Bhopal's international film festival

· Case study, Web, Laravel

PIFFI — the People's International Film Festival of India — runs from 17 to 20 December 2026 at Ravindra Bhawan in Bhopal. It's the festival's first edition, which made the website more important than usual: for most filmmakers around the world, the website is the festival until they arrive.

I built the site and its content CRM in collaboration with Zealcraft Technologies, the festival's technology partner. Here's how we approached it.

A first edition has to earn trust fast

An established festival has a track record. A new one has a website. A filmmaker deciding whether to submit wants answers in seconds:

  • What are the awards, and are they real? (A prize pool of up to ₹15 lakh.)
  • What are the deadlines and late fees?
  • Is my film eligible?
  • Who is behind the festival?

So the structure follows those questions, not an org chart. Awards, fees, eligibility and deadlines sit up front. Leadership, the honorary council, advisory board, organising committee and team each get their own page, because names and faces build credibility.

Every audience gets its own door

A festival talks to many people at once, so the site does too:

  • Filmmakers — awards, rules, deadlines and a direct route to submit on FilmFreeway
  • Film schools — a dedicated page for academic partnerships
  • Volunteers — how to get involved
  • Press — coverage and a media library with festival videos
  • Visitors — venue, host city and what the festival offers

A warm, cinematic feel

Festival sites often go dark and dramatic. PIFFI's identity is warmer — gold, rust and deep brown, like the light in a cinema just before the film starts. Big, calm typography and generous space let the content feel premium without shouting.

A CRM the team actually runs

The most important feature is one visitors never see. Festival information changes constantly: new jury members, partners, press coverage, updated deadlines. If every change needs a developer, the site goes stale within weeks.

So behind the website is a custom Laravel CRM where the festival team manages:

  • pages and festival information
  • leadership, council, committee and team profiles
  • partners and sponsors
  • press coverage and the media library, with uploads served from a dedicated API portal

The team updates the site themselves, the same day something changes.

What I took away

For an event, the website is the first venue people visit. Get the essentials — clarity, trust and ease of updating — right, and the design has room to be beautiful.

If you're planning an event, festival or institution site, let's talk. You can see the live site at piffi.in, or read the PIFFI case study.

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