Last month, YouTube had announced its inititive of holding an online film festival called, We Are One: A Global Film Festival. Prominent film festivals from around the globe have been invited to screen their films at this platform, where MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will represent India. The reason for coming up with this initiative is the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, which has made the physical presence of any film festival impossible.
MAMI has zeroed down on four films which will be streamed as part of the festival in the coming days. The films are Prateek Vats’s Eeb Allay Ooo! (Hindi), Shyam Vyas's short film, Natkhat (Hindi), starring Vidya Balan, Arun Karthick’s Nasir (Tamil) and Atul Mongia’s short film, Awake (English).
Eeb Allay Ooo! will stream on 30 May at 4:30 pm for 24 hours. Natkhat will be available on 2 June only at 4:30 pm. Nasir can be seen for seven days, beginning from 6 June at 7 pm. Awake will also be available for seven days, beginning 7 June at 4:30 pm.
Speaking about the online festival, an official statement from MAMI said, “Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival is the only film festival from India that has been invited for this initiative that brings together 21 of the world’s leading film festivals, including the Berlin International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival.”