With just two months to go for the International Film Festival of India in Goa, the information and broadcasting ministry has handed over the reins of the festival to National Film Development Corporation (NFDC). So far, the Directorate of Film Festivals has been organizing the gala event.
According to the newspaper Hindustan Times, NFDC will have a free hand to plan and run the nine day festival. It will collaborate with the ministry, signing a memorandum of understanding, to etch out the new handling of the festival.
An anonymous source told the newspaper that the ministry wanted to bring in professionals to run the festival. “There were too many complaints and glitches during the past few editions of IFFI. Complaints ranged from logistical problems to selection of films,” the source told Hindustan Times.
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Previously, the former I & B minister, M Venkaiah Naidu, had formed a preview committee consisting of 20 members to select films for the upcoming edition of the festival.
Smriti Irani took charge of the ministry in July 2017 and a new committee of 40 members, headed by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, has been constituted to curate films for the international festival.
Film critics Khalid Mohamed, Bhawana Somaaya, filmmakers Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Nitesh Tiwari, and Raja Krishna Menon, editor Aarti Bajaj, actress Pallavi Joshi, documentary filmmaker Siddharth Kak and author Narendra Kohli, among others, are part of the new committee.
NFDC had organised two events, Ek Nayi Subah and Modi Fest, to celebrate prime minister Narendra Modi’s third year in office.
The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will be held in Goa from 20 to 28 November.