Actor-producer-director Amol Palekar is quite excited. Even though his latest fim Dhoomkhata starring Om Puri and Sachin Khedekar among others, is gearing up for an early release, he has been invited by the Sydney International Film Festival authorities to be present during the festival there as he is going to be honoured with a retrospective of his films.

 Palekar said that he is overwhelmed by the love and respect shown towards him by the people of Sydney who have come forward to honour him by showing a few selected films from his repertoire. “It is surprising, but my films have till date not been shown in any fesitval held in India though I have been associated in different capacities with different film festivals including Mumbai's MAMI in my career which has stretched almost forty years”, he said.

 Amol is now on seventh heaven because besides screening most of his films both in Marathi as well as Hindi, the festival authrotieis are also planning to screen some films of his as an actor in languages like Hindi, Malayalam,Kannada and Marathi too.

Says Amol, “I have also been asked to send the festival authorities some of my old paintings which I had drawn when I had passed out of my J.J School of Arts almost four decades ago because they are planning to unleash the entire body of my work when the retrospective is on show. They even wanted me to stage my old plays in Marathi during the festiva,l but then since it is not humanly possible and feasible for me, the idea has been withdrawn”.