The growing demand for independent films about Indian culture has inspired local businessmen, several of them filmmakers, to organize the second annual Atlanta Indo-American Film Festival, to be held Nov. 15-18 at several venues, including Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Raktim Sen, an information technology engineer with Travelport, a global distribution systems company, told GlobalAtlanta that the Atlanta festival is more relevant to independent Indian filmmakers than those of cities like New York and Los Angeles because it features non-mainstream films about India.

“We have been able to take the leadership in creating the festival before other big cities do similar things because Atlanta isn’t as bogged down with mainstream films as many other cities are,” Mr. Sen said.

Mr. Sen also is a film director whose latest work, “Be the Change…Life Mission of Dean Lawrence Edward Carter, Sr.,” was featured at the festival’s kickoff banquet Oct. 2. The film examines the life of Dr. Carter, an esteemed Morehouse College professor who founded the Gandhi Institute for Reconciliation in 2000.

Ani Agnihotri, who is the Atlanta festival’s director, the executive producer of Mr. Sen’s film about Dr. Carter and president of IIIrd Millennium Technologies Inc., a health care and technology solutions provider, also said that he isn’t aware of another festival like Atlanta’s in the United States.

And although the Indo-American festival has cross-town competition from the Film Festival of India—now entering its seventh year in cooperation with the High Museum of Art—the Indo-American festival also is unique in the Georgia capital.

Mr. Agnihotri, who also works with the High Museum’s festival, said that while that festival primarily screens films from established Indian filmmakers, the Atlanta Indo-American Film Festival promotes films made by non-Indian residents, although each film’s subject matter must concern India or the non-resident Indian diaspora.

Another disparity is that while the Film Festival of India primarily screens narrative features, the Atlanta Indo-American Film Festival also screens documentary features, documentary shorts and narrative shorts.

This year’s Atlanta Indo-American Film Festival includes five films by local filmmakers, and event organizers said that they expect more than 3,000 attendees to participate in the festival.

Some of the films appearing at this week’s festival include a narrative feature that focuses on the tensions created by outsourcing American jobs to Indians and a documentary feature that highlights the rash of suicides taking place in the Vidarbha region of central India.           

In February, Kaneva Inc. will host the online portion of the festival, which will include short-film and music-competition sections. Kaneva’s founder, Chris Klaus, a local businessman who launched Internet Security Systems Inc. while still a student at Georgia Tech, told GlobalAtlanta that he is glad his company can help introduce audiences from around the world to innovative films.

“It’s great to see film festivals like the Atlanta Indo-American Film Festival take advantage of what’s happening on the Internet with the growth of online 3D worlds like Kaneva and move audiences online,” Mr. Klaus said. “Doing so opens up the ability for so many more people around the world to have access to great films and filmmakers, and it also significantly enriches our online culture.”

All of the Atlanta Indo-American Film Festival’s organizers are volunteers, but they say the platform provided by the festival makes the time they devote to its organization well worth it.

“Filmmaking is like any performing art—you need an audience,” Mr. Sen said. “If you don’t have an audience, your work basically becomes meaningless. This film festival provides filmmakers with a platform where we can not only show our product, but we can interact with the audience. It’s very, very important.”