India is well represented at the Dhaka International Film Festival (DIFF) with over 20 features and shorts that will be screened across six sections. The 16th edition of Bangladeshi film festival is being held in the capital from 12 to 20 January 2018.
The festival opened on 12 January with a screening of the Turkish film, Zer, directed by Kazim Öz. The theme of this year's festival is "Better Film, Better Audience, Better Society". 216 films from 64 countries will be shown in eight sections — Asian Competition, Retrospective, Bangladesh Panorama, Cinema of the World, Children's Films, Spiritual Films, Women Filmmakers, and Short and Independent Films.
This year's retrospective will screen films by two French filmmakers Julie Bertuccelli and Céline Sciamma while the Bangladesh Panorama will showcase the best of Bangladeshi cinema.
Fifteen Asian films, including Konkona Sensharma's A Death In The Gunj (2017) and Jatla Siddartha's Love and Shukla (2017) will compete in the Asian Film Competition to be judged by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Amir-Yusefi, filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli, Norwegian film distributor Age Hoffart and American entertainment publicist Gary Springer.
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The Cinema of the World section will see a number of films in Indian languages including Kannada with Reservation (2016), Akkammana Bagya/Akkamma's Fate (2017), Uppina Kagada/Sand Paper (2016), Bengali films Bench Thakar Gaan/The Song of Life (2016) and Tope/The Bait (2016), Tamil film Revelations (2016), Hindi films Teen Aur Aadha (2017) and Bhasmasur (2017), Marathi film Pimpal (2017) and the documentary on Nabendu Ghosh by Ratnottama Sengupta, And They Made Classics (2017). The best film would be announced via a public vote.
Indian female filmmakers Teenaa Kaur Pasricha, Aparajita Ghosh, Swati Chakraborti and Modhurima Sinha will screen their short films in the Women Filmmaker section, while Ananya Kasaravalli's Chronicles of Hari (2016) and Aparna Sen's Sonata (2017) are being shown in the same section.
The Manipuri film, Loktak Lairembee/Lady of the Lake (2016), directed by Dr Haobam Paban Kumar, Odia film Khyanikaa/The Lost Idea (2016), directed by Amartya Bhattacharya, Hindi film Agam (2017), Sumit Mishra and the Indo-American production Sound of Silence (2017), directed by Dr Bijukumar Damodaran will be showcased as part of the Spiritual Film Section.
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Three children's films, Malayalam film Clint (2017) on child prodigy and painter Edmund Thomas Clint, Marathi film Half Ticket (2016), a remake of National Award-winning Kaaka Muttai (2015) and Kannada film Raju (2017), about a young village boy will compete for the Best Juvenile Audience Badal Rahman Award in the Children's Film section. Toffee (2017), the directorial debut of Tahira Kashyap, will be shown in the Short and Independent Films section.