By: Amit Agarwal
The 47th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) - IFFI 2016 gets ready to kick-off with a varied genre of close to 200 films from 88 countries across the world, here is the writer's list of 12 not-to-be-missed films
9. Take Me Home (Iran)
Abbas Kiarostami’s final film will be screened in a section dedicated to him as a tribute at IFFI this year. One of the most celebrated Iranian filmmakers, Kiarostami, went to southern Italy and created a beautiful and playful black and white short film Take Me Home.
A detour from his usual style of character-driven films, Take Me Home is a purely landscape-based affair.
10. The Stopover (France)
The Stopover is this year’s winner of the Best Screenplay award winner in UN Certain Regard category at Cannes. Directed by sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin, the film revolves around two servicewomen, Aurore and Marine, who have been close friends ever since their school days, growing up together in a military town.
The duo and their unit is sent on a three-day course of physical and psychological therapy in Cyprus after completing a gruelling tour of duty in Afghanistan. Here, their recent Afghan experience is put under scrutiny and review with the aid of virtual reality.
11. Tamara (Venezuela)
In this film by Elia K Schneider portrays the real life story of Venezuela’s first transgender politician Tamara Adrian. The film portrays Tamara Adrian’s personal as well as political struggle through the years.
Schneider, who has previously directed acclaimed films like Huelepega and Punto y Raya, chooses to focus on the complexity of identity in this film. It is one of the most interesting films to hit the festival circuit this year.
12. Sand Storm (Israel)
Sand Storm is Israel’s official entry to the 2017 Oscars. Elite Zexer’s debut feature is set in a Bedouin village in Israel and revolves around the lives of two women: Jalila, a 42-year-old woman, whose husband has just married another younger woman, and Layla, her 18-year-old daughter, whose secret, strictly forbidden love affair has just been revealed. The film captures the strenuously complex relationship between love and the practicalities of real life.
Critics particularly praise it for being an emotionally intelligent first feature that offers a sympathetic but clear-eyed look at the tangled skein of inequalities that entrap women (and the men they love and resent) in a Bedouin village stranded between modernization and anachronistic patriarchy.