Czech Film to be opening film
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Hollywood actress and social activist Susan Sarandon will inaugurate the 44th edition of IFFI along with Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi. The Czech Film ‘The Don Juans’ by Jiri Menzel will be the opening film for this year’s festival.
Addressing media persons flanked by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and other officials, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Manish Tiwari who was in the State to oversee preparations for the festival beginning November 20th, announced that the state and central governments would be putting up a joint show to ensure that the this edition of IFFI will be of international standard.
“I am happy with the way preparations are going. We want to make the International Film Festival of India to be of international standard. We are preparing for it together,” Tiwari said.
Director of the IFFI secretariat Shankar Mohan later announced that Hollywood actress of yesteryear Susan Sarandon as well as Iranian filmmaker of repute Majid Majidi would also be gracing the occasion. “We are bringing together an American and an Iranian to the same table,” Tiwari later remarked in the lighter vein.
This will be the 9th year in a row that Goa is hosting the IFFI with each year questions being raised about the expenditure as well as the fact that the infrastructure has remained static ever since its first year in the State.
Later addressing media persons, Vice Chairman of the Entertainment Society of Goa Vishnu Wagh said that just as the IFFI will this year be hosting a special section on the North Eastern States of the country so too he was pressing for a Goa section as a tribute to the host State.
“This year’s IFFI will be have a special focus on films from the North East. Besides there will also be handicraft stalls and cultural performances with focus on the North East,” Wagh said, adding that he had suggested to the Union Minister that such a section on Goa should be curated.
“Already films like ‘Baga beach’ and the ‘Coffin Maker’ which are related to Goa are there in the Indian panorama section. We hope that by next IFFI the ESG be allowed to curate such a section,” Wagh said.
The IFFI has already received more than 650 entries for cinema of the world section of which around 200 will be selected. Further, the Indian panorama section which has already been chosen includes the film ‘Baga Beach’ by famed Goan film maker Laxmikant Shetgaoncar.
