Former Cannes film market director Jerome Paillard, Indian actor and producer Rana Daggubati and Nicole Guillemet who was co-director of the Sundance Film Festival have joined the advisory board of the inaugural Cinevesture International Film Festival in India.
The advisory board also includes Indian filmmaker Ajitpal Singh (Sundance title “Fire in the Mountains,” SonyLIV series “Tabbar”), Bangladeshi director Nuhash Humayun (SXSW winner “Moshari,” Raindance winner “Pett Kata Shaw”) and “Make Money Screenwriting” series author Julian Friedmann.
The festival will take place in Chandigarh, northern India, March 27-31. Bina Paul, who was artistic director at the International Film Festival of Kerala for more than a decade, will fulfil that role at the Chandigarh event. Film critic Namrata Joshi serves as market curator.
The festival is the brainchild of Nina Lath Gupta, who previously headed Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest co-production market, from 2006 to 2018. Cinevesture’s focus is on building the business of film and addressing the needs of a producer at various stages of filmmaking.
“There is no one prototype of a film festival – on the contrary, its execution can be approached from several perspectives. Mine tends to veer towards a festival that meets the needs of thefilm producer,both in terms of content and skill sets. The producer is the only entity who is attached to a film from its inception to the last mile of taking it to the audience,” Gupta said.
The festival will feature a market designed to create links between investors and curated projects. The market will facilitate development and production of long form film content through financial investment in curated projects, and independent projects brought to the marketplace. The projects will also be introduced to exhibitors and distributors.
The films in the festival will be in strands including world cinema, Indian cinema, shorts and classics. There will be People’s Choice Awards for international film, Indian film, short film, student film and set design.
An objective of the festival is to nurture potential talent, expose them to the latest creative, technical, and market trends, and foster a network of contacts between new and existing talent through workshops, master classes and knowledge sharing. To this end there will be several masterclasses.
