Happiness in store for movie lovers

Fest look

Film lovers in the capital have a date with the sixth edition of Jagran Film Festival which commences from July 1 and goes on till July 5, at Siri Fort Auditorium.

Centered on the ‘Happiness’ theme, this year’s festival is poised to enthral and entertain cinema lovers and reach new horizons with its colour, collection and cinematic delights as it travels through 17 cities over the next three months making it India’s largest film festival by geographical reach.

This year, a grand opening has been planned with Masaan, India’s high profile entry to the Cannes Film Festival, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and starring Sanjay Mishra, Richa Chadda among others. Winner of two prestigious awards, Masaan has received wide critical acclaim globally and it will compete for the Indian Showcase Awards.

The festival will see films under competitive categories such as ‘Indian Feature’, ‘Top Shorts’, ‘Jagran Shorts’, ‘Cinema of the sellers’ and ‘Debut Directors’. Besides offering a larger-than-life premiere platform for films in the ‘Jagran Premiere’ category, the festival salutes the old is gold under the ‘Retrospective’ section, and also pays homage to one-of-its kind Hindi classics in the ‘Homage’ category.

The highlights include a handpicked lineup of crème de-la crème shorts films in the ‘Top Shorts’ category that showcase foreign cinema with specially-curated sections on thematic lines sans dialogues including 1 Man 8 Cameras, French films Leftover and Your Heart at Random and Korean film Hosanna. Under ‘Jagran Shorts’ a variety of global films such as Hiroshima (Indian), Gen X 01 (Hindi), Swedish films 600$ and Repestre, Vithya (Marathi), Arabic film Ailia and others compete for the coveted ‘Best Short Film’ title.

Indian feature section this year brings iconic Bollywood hits along with some regional must-watch films including Toymaker (Malayalam), Chotoder Chobi (Bengali), Arohi (Assamese), Postcard (Marathi) among others. Within the non-competitive ‘Happiness’ section, the festival revisits some of the most inspiring films of all times including Life is Beautiful, Pursuit of Happiness and Gone with the Wind; all-time Hindi favourites such as Anand, Guide, along with other iconic films from the world cinema will also be screened.

Creative workshops and sessions with experts including screenwriting workshop by Anjum Rajabali, still photography workshop by Krishhna Murthy, a session on ‘How Films are made’ with Somnath Sen and an exclusive tete-e-tete with filmmaker Subhash Ghai on various elements of film-making have also been planned.

With the American Center as the official country focus partner, the festival is surely to make you see the glory of the silver screen.

  Dates: Wednesday,
    1st July’2015 – Sunday,
    5th July’2015
  Venue: Siri Fort
    Auditorium, New Delhi
Time: 10.00 am onwards
 Registrations:             www.jff.co.in
DHNS