Stuart Gatt’s “Catching Dust,” which premiered at Tribeca earlier this year, will open the 54th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa.
Robert Kolodny’s “The Featherweight,” which bowed at Venice, will close the festival. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “about Dry Grasses,” for which Merve Dizdar won best actress at Cannes, will be the mid-festival gala.
The fiction feature strand of the Indian panorama showcase will open with Anand Ekarshi’s “Aattam” and the documentary strand with Longjam Meena’s “Andro Dream.” The panorama will screen 25 fiction features, including five mainstream films, plus 20 documentaries.
Michael Douglas will deliver the key festival masterclass. The international competition jury will be led by eminent filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (“Elizabeth”) and also includes producers Catherine Dussart (“Silence in the Dust”) and Helen Leake (“Carnifex”), former Cannes market chief Jerome Paillard and Pedro Almodovar’s long-standing cinematographer José Luis Alcaine (“Strange Way of Life.”
From this year, the festival is recognizing the growing influence of streaming platforms and is instituting a best web series award, for which 32 shows will compete.
The festival will feature 198 international films, of which some 40 are directed by women, 13 world premieres, 18 international premieres, 62 Asia premieres and 89 India premieres.
Indian classics restored by the National Film Archive of India and the National Film Development Corporation screening at the festival include Debaki Bose’s “Vidyapati” (1937), P.K. Atre’s “Shyamchi Aai” (1953), Biren Nag’s “Bees Saal Baad” (1962), K.V. Reddy’s “Patala Bhairavi” (1951), Chetan Anand’s “Haqeeqat” (1964), Vijay Anand’s “Guide” (1965) and Mrinal Sen’s “Chorus” (1974).
The festival runs Nov. 20-28. The Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest film market, runs alongside the festival Nov. 20-24. There will be stalls from the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand and 10 international stands, including those from Russia, South Africa and the U.K.
