Highlights for cinephiles

Once every year, Mumbai’s cinephiles get all their prayers answered as filmmakers from across the world and from all regional factions of the country come together for the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI). This year’s line-up is impressive as always, with names like Bond girl Monica Bellucci and Oscar-award-winning director John Madden. And that’s not all that one needs to look forward to, confesses creative director Smriti Kiran, who had an active role in picking out the line-up. “It’s difficult to choose between your babies, but I’m proud to say that we have a fantastic line-up of films this time round,” she says.

The festival not only curates a line-up of international, Hindi and regional films, it will also have a number of films premiering for the first time. “It’s amazing that people have started trusting us with Asian premieres and world premieres now. We have the premiere of The Hungry, which stars Naseeruddin Shah, Tisca Chopra, Antonio Akeel and Neeraj Kabi, and The Song of the Scorpions, directed by Anup Singh, which has Irrfan Khan. We were also glad to have Anurag Kashyap trust us with his film Mukkebaaz, which will be our opening film,” Smriti elaborates.

A unique aspect of MAMI is that people not only get to watch the films but also get to interact with the makers. “This is one of the most important sides to MAMI and we have tried to have a great line-up of question and answer sessions with filmmakers,” says Smriti, adding that some names to watch out for include screenwriters Vasan Bala and Varun Grover, and filmmakers Vikramaditya Motwane, Maroon director Pulkit and Newton director Amit Masurkar.

The poster of S Durga, the most controversial film at MAMI

Of course, the much-talked about session with Monica Bellucci, which will take place on October 15, and have the actress in conversation with Anurag Kashyap is one of the highlights of the festival. “We also have Erik Barmack, Vice President of Netflix Originals, who will be in conversation with Anupama Chopra, in a kind of master class on the web,” says Smriti, adding that the entire New Medium section is actually something to watch out for.

One installation, especially, has Smriti’s vote — a CCTV installation that will provide live feed of the entire Lower Parel area around Phoenix Market City. “The live presentation — titled CCTV Landscape from Lower Parel — will have feed coming in from across the area and a live commentary to go along with it. It will show the history of Lower Parel as well as the sheer amount that can be seen through surveillance cameras,” explains Smriti.

Monica Bellucci

The creative director also has an announcement that she is very excited about. “The Malayali film Sexy Durga was denied approval for MAMI earlier by the censors and everyone was trying to fight for the film to be screened. After a hard-fought battle, the film will be screened as S Durga,” smiles Smriti.