PANAJI
The stage is set for the curtains to be raised for the 54th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) where Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur will do the honours to inaugurate it at a gala opening ceremony at the SPM stadium in Bambolim.
The Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest global film market organised by National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), alongside IFFI every year will also be inaugurated by the Minister tomorrow.
Bollywood stars Madhuri Dixit and Shahid Kapoor will perform at the opening ceremony where eminent film personalities including Salman Khan, Vidya Balan, Ayushmann Khurrana, Catherine Zeta Jones, Anupam Kher, Vicky Kaushal, Siddharth Malhotra, Aditi Rao Hydari, AR Rahman, Amit Trivedi, among others are expected to be present.
Several other film stars such as Shriya Saran, Nushratt Bharucha, Pankaj Tripathi, Shantanu Moitra, Shreya Ghoshal and Sukhwinder Singh will also perform in the opening ceremony, the organisers said.
The festival this year is will have an array of world cinema to showcase to the audiences worldwide with the international premiere of Catching Dust, by award-winning British filmmaker Stuart Gatt slated to be the opening film.
Hollywood legend Michael Douglas will be awarded the prestigious Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award during the nine-day festival. Douglas will attend the festival to accept this award, along with his wife and acclaimed actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, according to Prithul Kumar, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
More than 270 films will be showcased during the festival at 4 venues, including INOX Panjim, Maquinez Palace, INOX Porvorim and Z Square Samrat Ashok, Kumar said at the curtain-raiser press conference on Sunday.
The ‘International section’ will have 198 films, 18 more than last year, including 13 World Premiers, 18 International Premiers, 62 Asia Premiers and 89 India Premiers.
This year, there are a record number of 2926 entries from 105 countries, which is 3 times more than the international submissions last year.
The ‘Indian Panorama’ section will showcase 25 feature films and 20 non-feature films from India.
The opening film in the feature section is Malayalam film “Aattam” and in the non-feature section “Andro Dreams” from Manipur will be the opening film.
The Best Web Series (OTT) Award has also been introduced this year in a bid to acknowledge and honour the flourishing content and creators of OTT platforms.
