The first line-up for the Kazhcha Indie Film Festival (K!FF) has been released and contains as many as 12 critically acclaimed films including, Ralang Road, Kothanodi, and Haanduk.
The film festival, organized by the Kazhcha Film Forum and Niv Art Movies, has been started as a protest against the alleged injustice meted out to independent filmmakers by the Kerala Chalachitra Academy and the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).
The line up includes Shanavas Naranipuzha's Karie, a Malayalam satire on caste and religion that had been ignored by the IFFK. The list has two more Malayalam films — Vith by Don Palathara and Thooppu by Sandeep Adhikari.
The festival, which will run parallel to the IFFK (8-15 December) between 8-11 December, will also feature four films from the north east. These include the Karlovy Vary nominee Ralang Road; Assamese film, Haanduk by Jaicheng Jai Dohutia; Bhaskar Hazarika's National Award winning folk-tale drama, Kothanodi, starring Adil Hussain and Seema Biswas.
The KIFF will also host a few films that were a part of the Mumbai Film Festival 2017 — Jiju Antony's multi-lingual Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani?, the first production venture of Kazhcha Film Forum; Juze by Miransha Naik; Pushpendra Singh's Ashwatthama; The Ektara Collective's Turup; and Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy's English feature, A Billion Colour Story.