Films from International and Indian shorts competition screened at JFF

Jagran Film Festival

The 9th Jagran Film Festival that aims to connect great cinema with nationwide audiences, conducted a pre-festival screening of films from International and Indian short competition, that was showcased at the Jagran Film Festival, at DT Cinemas, Saket on Saturday. Festival Director, Mayank Shekhar, commenced the event talking about the 9th edition of Jagran Film Festival, sharing festival highlights and movies to look out for at the festival that will commence from 29th June'18 onwards at Siri Fort.

As part of the pre-festival screening, Hung Yi Wu's On The Waitlist from Taiwan, Naomi van Niekerk's My Mum's Bonkers from South Africa, Kala / Fish from Estonia and Heimat from Poland were screened as part of films from International shorts competition. The Caregiver, Maya, Humming Bird and Counterfeit Kunkoo were screened from films from the Indian Shorts competition.

This year, JFF received nearly 3500 submissions across genres from 100 countries. The curated program will showcase over 200 films. The competition segment will include International and Indian Features, Shorts, Indian Documentaries and Student Films. The non-competitive segment will include Thematic Specials, a Retrospective, Tributes, India Showcase, World Panorama and Hot Shorts.

Mayank Shekhar, Festival Director, 9th Jagran Film Festival said, "The reason why Delhi made the finest filmmakers is because everyone has the access to the finest of films here. The culture of film festivals shifted to Mumbai and there was this void to be filled in Delhi. As a film critic who has been reviewing films for 15 years, I am here to tell you that we have put up the best films together in a long time and have tried to fill that void. We have handpicked films we love in different sections and added new categories as well. This festival has been created by the movie buffs for the movie buffs."

JFF has introduced a new competition category of Indian Documentary Features this year, comprising internationally acclaimed and award-winning documentaries such as Rahul Jain's Machines, Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla's An Insignificant Man, Vaishali Sinha's Ask the Sexpert, Suman Ghosh's The Argumentative Indian, Anushka Meenakshi and Ishwar Srikumar's Up Down & Sideways, Onir's Raising The Bar and Kamal Swaroop's Pushkar Puran. The category will have a special jury consisting of the country's leading journalists, led by Sudhir Mishra.

The India Features Competition includes award-winning films in varied languages including three Malayalam films: Angamaly Diaries director Lijo Jose Pellissery's next - Ee. Ma. Yau, Zakaria Edayur's Sudani From Nigeria and Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's S Durga besides Rima Das' Village Rockstars (Assamese) Abhay Simha's Paddayi (Tulu), Atanu Ghosh's Mayurakshi (Bengali), Pushpendra Singh's Ashwatthama (Brijbhasha), Three Smoking Barrels (6 different North East languages), as well as Hindi language films such as Anurag Kashyap's Mukkabaaz, Shoojit Sircar's October and Meghna Gulzar's Raazi.

The Shorts program will include a competition category with Indian and international shorts and a non-competition category called Hot Shorts.

The curated India Shorts Competition segment will feature shorts from across the country such as Scattered (Kashmiri), Paashi (Pahadi, Hindi), Eye Test (Malayalam), Adrift (Bengali), Valay (Marathi),a dialogue-less short, Rozana, a documentary short, Bismaar Ghar (Gujarati) and Abhishek Verma's animation short, Hide and Seek. The segment includes two World Premieres: Vikas Chandra's Maya (Hindi) starring Kirti Kulhari and Naveen Kasturia and Koel Sen's Valay (Marathi). There are also four India Premieres of internationally acclaimed shorts, Ruthy Pribar's The Caregiver(English, Hebrew, Gujarati), Reema Sengupta's Counterfeit Kunkoo (Marathi, Hindi), Mansi Jain's Everything Is Fine starring Seema Pahwa and Paulomi Ghosh (Hindi)and Ajitpal's Singh's Humming Bird (Hindi).

The International Shorts Competition features internationally acclaimed narratives plus documentary and animation shorts from 2017-18. The curated program will showcase World Premiere of Chachura (Argentina) and India Premiere of award-winning narrative shorts such as On The Waitlist (Taiwan) directed by Hung Yi Wu, The Bridge (Brazil), Lilly Within the Clouds (France) Bubble (Iran/Australia), Three Men (Iceland), Bakyt (Kyrgystan) by Meerim Dogdurboka, Odd Job Man(Denmark), Fish (Estonia), the documentary short The Carpenters (China,USA), Manicure (Egypt) and an animation short My Mum's Bonkers (South Africa).

The non-competitive shorts segment Hot Shorts features some of the best shorts in recent years including Payal Kapadia's award-winning Afternoon Clouds, (Cinefondation, Cannes Film Festival 2017), Aaba (Berlinale 2017), animation shorts - Tokri and Maacher Jhol and Soundproof starring Soha Ali Khan.

Thematic Specials will screen two documentaries in the Fan section, Being Bhaijaan, a documentary on Salman Khan and For The Love Of A Man, a documentary on Rajnikanth. The City focus: Mumbai will feature two films, Tu Hai Mera Sunday and Court, State focus: Maharashtra will feature acclaimed Marathi films Killa and Madhuri Dixit starrer Bucket List and Country focus will showcase some of the best films from Argentina. There will be an Achievers Segment featuring best of the biopics.

The India Showcase category takes us on an emotional rollercoaster with films like Turup by Ektara Collective, Bioscopewallah starring Danny Denzongappa, The Hungry, Devashish Makhija's Ajji and Kuch Bheege Alfaaz.

World Panorama category will feature films like Fan of Amoory, a sweet Arabic film that follows a young boy as he goes through challenges to achieve his dream of becoming a professional football player.

The newly introduced Student Focus category introduces movies like Death Lay Here, a short horror film about a young man who comes across a box with a hidden secret. Gift, the story of a family reacting to a foreign object entering their home and their struggle against its power.

The 2018 edition of the Jagran Film Festival that will connect 18 cities and showcase over 200 films will commence in Delhi and tour to other Indian cities like Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Dehradun, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Bhopal, Indore, Gorakhpur, Agra, Ludhiana, Hissar, Meerut and Raipur before concluding in Mumbai in September.


• Dates: Friday, 29th June - Tuesday, 3rd July
• Venue: Siri Fort Auditorium, Delhi
• Time: 10.00 am onwards
• Registrations: www.jff.co.in

Also Read: Jagran Film Festival: Tributes To Shashi Kapoor, Kundan Shah, Sridevi

Catch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates