by: Amit Agarwal
Arun Jaitley, Minister for Finance, Corporate Affairs and I&B said that International Film Festival of India held a special significance and had become a global brand in the world of cinema. It promoted excellence and provided an opportunity to showcase the best domestic and international talent. The Minister said this while addressing the curtain raiser press conference on International Film Festival of India -2015. Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, Laxmikant Parsekar, Chief Minister of Goa and Sunil Arora, Secretary I&B were also present at the occasion.
Elaborating on the festival profile Jaitley said the film festival would showcase 187 films from 89 countries in World Cinema section along with 26 Feature and 21 Non-Feature films in Indian Panorama section. Anil Kapoor would be the Chief Guest at the opening ceremony. The jury for International Competition included Chairperson Shekhar Kapur along with Michael Radford, Julia Jentsch, Suha Arraf and Jeon Kyu-Hwan. The 13-member Feature jury and 7- member Non-feature jury is headed byAribam Syam Sharma and Rajendra Janglay respectively. The opening film of IFFI 2015 would be ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ by Matthew Brown. The film is a true story of friendship between Indian Mathematician Ramanujan and Professor GH Hardy that forever changed the world of mathematics.
Jaitley said that the ‘Kingdom of Spain’ would be the focus country for IFFI 2015. The films of master Spanish filmmakers Carlos Saura and Pedro Almadovar along with contemporary filmmakers like Alejandro Amenabar would be screened at the festival. The section would also feature Spanish actress Leticia Dolera’s directorial debut ‘Requirements to Be a Normal Person. The IFFI 2015 in the International Competition would include 15 films from across the globe.
Jaitley also highlighted the new initiatives of IFFI-2015. He said this year IFFI would feature a special section on ‘World Cinema Restored Classics’ to highlight the idea of film restoration. This would feature a package of classics to put spotlight on National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM). The Minister further said that the film festival would also introduce a new segment- ‘First Cut’ to recognize the young talent in the field of cinema and would screen some of the outstanding directorial debuts of 2015. The section would feature emerging filmmakers including Brian Perkins (Film - Golden Kingdom, USA), Michael Klette (Film - Solness, Germany) among others. The festival in association with the Oscar Academy would also promote skill development in film making through master classes on varied topics like sound designing, film archive and film editing.
Jaitley said that IFFI 2015 would also include special award - “ICFT- UNESCO Fellini Prize” in collaboration with the International Council for Film, Television and Audiovisual Communication (ICFT), Paris and UNESCO. The award would be presented to a film which reflects the ideals of peace, tolerance, non-violence and friendship promoted by UNESCO. Jaitley then proceeded on to release the poster for the 46th International Film Festival at the press conference.