Hungarian filmmaker Istevan Szabo and American director Martin Scorsese will be honoured with Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award at the 52 International Film Festival of India (IFFI) starting on November 20. The IFFI will also have retrospectives of master directors Bela Tarr and Andrei Konchalovsky and actor Rajanikanth.
A musical set in Mexico and Spain, The King of all the World (El Rey de Todo El Mundo) by Spanish maestro Carlos Saura will be the opening film at the ten-day festival, which will be its international premier, while The Power of the Dog directed by Jane Campion, winner of Best Director at Venice Film Festival, will be the mid-fest film.
Saura's latest offering is filmed by Apocalypse Now cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.
The winner of Lifetime Achievement Award Szabo, one of the most critically acclaimed Hungarian film directors who was the first from his country to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is known for his masterpieces like Mephisto (1981), Father (1966). Scorsese, a Hollywood giant, is known for films including his latest Irish Man, The Wolf of the Wall Street, Shutter Island.
Providing information about the annual event, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur also said the festival would also pay homage to master actors and filmmakers like Dilip Kumar, Sanchari Vijay, Sumitra Bhave, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Surekha Sikri, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bertrand Tavenier, Christopher Plummer and Jean-Claude Carrière. The festival will also pay a special tribute to Sir Sean Connery, the first James Bond on the big screen.
Around 30 films have been shortlisted for screening in the Festival Kaleidoscope and World Panorama sections.
Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad will head the jury, which has British director Stephen Woolley, Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra, Sri Lankan filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara and Indian director Nila Madhab Panda as members.
The festival for the first time will have a BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- Film Festival alongside the main festival.
It is also collaborating with major OTT players Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, Voot and Sony Liv through exclusive master classes, content launches and previews, curated film package screenings, and various other on-ground and virtual events. Thakur said the trend of watching movies on OTT is on the rise and IFFI is embracing new technology and providing a platform for the industry artists to interact with OTT players.
Netflix is organising a three-day virtual master class by Paris-based renowned school of image and arts, Gobelins-School L’image. It will also premier the The Power of the Dog in India besides proposing to organise a special screening of film Dhamaka, including an introduction of the film Kartik Aaryanand, and a preview of Episode one of Aranyak, an upcoming crime thriller series starring Raveena Tandon and Ashutosh Rana.
SonyLiv has proposed a master class by Scam-1992 screenplay writers Sumit Purohit and Saurav Dey that will be moderated by Indranil Chakraborty, Business Head Studio Next. Zee5 has specially curated Breakpoint – the popular Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi series for IFFI.
As part of Azaadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, the 75th year celebrations of Indian independence, the festival will also provide a platform for young talents from across India to connect with mainstream filmmakers and the industry. Seventy five creative minds under 35 years will be invited to interact with industry leaders and attend master classes at the festival.
These youngsters will be selected through a competition for young filmmakers from around the country. The competition aims to provide a platform to 75 young filmmakers, actors, singers, scriptwriters, and others to showcase their talent at a globally-recognised event. The last date to submit applications online is October 30 and detailed guidelines to be followed while submitting films for the ‘75 Creative Minds of Tomorrow’ could be accessed on www.dff.gov.in and www.iffi.org.
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