Peter Ho-sun Chan's The Warlords and Singaporean director Eric Khoo's My Magic will open this year's International Film Festival of India (IFFI) which is taking place in Goa from Nov 22-Dec 2.

The closing film will be Majid Majidi's Berlin Silver Bear winner The Song Of Sparrows.

About 5,000 delegates from India and abroad are expected to attend the festival which carries total prize money of $175,000 for the competitive sections for Asian, African and Latin American films. Jury members include Warlords director Chan,Filipino director Lav Diaz, Indian filmmaker Tabu, Iranian actress-director Niki Karimi and Venice film festivaldirector Marco Muller.

The Indian Panorama will feature 26 feature films and 21 non-features. Opening film is Yarwing, in the Kokborok language, marking the first time that a feature in a language from North-East India has opened the section.

In addition to the 15-film competition section and the Indian Panorama, the festival also features a World Cinema section, Film Heritage section, Indian retrospectives and three countries in focus - Russia, Switzerland and Iran.

Indian Retrospectives will showcase the films of L. V. Prasad, Bimal Roy, 75 years of Kannada Cinema and a talk by Kishwar Desai on 'Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai: Globalisation of Early Indian Cinema'.

Among international dignitaries, US director-actor John Landis is expected to attend IFFI where a retrospective of five of his films including Beverly Hills Cop 3 will be screened. Aamir Khan will present his film Taare Zameen Par as part of the Indian Panorama and is expected to be the guest of honor at the opening ceremony on Nov 22.

Side events alongside IFFI include the CII business summit, exhibitions related to cinema andthe Film Bazaar projects marketorganised by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

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