Austrian period drama Alma & Oskar is to open the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which has also unveiled a 15-strong competition line-up.
Directed by Dieter Berner, Alma & Oskar will receive its world premiere at the festival in Goa, which will run from November 20-28. Set in 1912 and starring Emily Cox and Valentin Postlmayr in the title roles, it follows the turbulent relationship between Viennese society grand dame Alma Mahler and Austrian artist Oskar Kokoshchka.
IFFI also announced that it’s mid-fest film will be Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s psychological thriller Fixation and the closing film is Krzysztof Zanussi’s Polish drama Perfect Number.
The 15 features that will compete for IFFI’s Golden Peacock Awards comprise 12 international titles and three from India.
The international features include Zanussi’s Perfect Number; Red Shoes from Mexican filmmaker Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser, which played at Venice; A Minor by Iranian New Wave director Dariush Mehrjui; Nader Saeivar’s Iranian drama No End, which credits Jafar Panahi as editor and advisor; Mediterranean Fever by Palestinian-Israeli writer-director Maha Haj, which won best screenplay when it played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes; and When The Waves Are Gone by Filipino film maker Lav Diaz.
Further international titles include I Have Electric Dreams from Costa Rican filmmaker Valentina Maurel, which won best director, actor and actress awards at Locarno; Cold As Marble by Azerbaijan director Asif Rustamov; Ursula Meier’s The Line, nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale; Argentinian director Rodrigo Guerrero’s Seven Dogs, which premiered at Cairo; Maariya: The Ocean Angel from Sri Lankan film maker Aruna Jayawardana; and Venice audience award winner Nezouh by Syrian director Soudade Kaadan.
The Indian titles comprise Vivek Agnihotri’s controversial Hindi drama The Kashmir Files, centred on the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir; Anant Mahadevan’s The Storyteller, which premiered at Busan International Film Festival; and Kamalakannan’s rural drama Kurangu Pedal, about a school boy wants to learn to ride a bike even as his father is unable to teach him.
The jury that will decide the winners include Israeli writer and director Nadav Lapid, US producer Jinko Gotoh, French film editor Pascale Chavance, Spanish documentary filmmaker, critic and journalist Javier Angulo Barturen and Indian director Sudipto Sen.
This year’s Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award will go to Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, who will also be the subject of an eight-film retrospective at IFFI.
The spotlight country at IFFI will be France with eight films being screened while the Indian Panorama strand will open with Prithvi Konanur’s Hadinelentu. The documentary film section will open with Divya Cowasji’s The Show Must Go On.
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