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.