KIFF to pay tribute to Bhanu Bannerjee, Hemant Kumar and Pandit Ravi Shankar

The Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) 2020 has announced the line-up of films to be screened from 5 to 12 November. The festival will pay tribute to legendary actor Bhanu Bannerjee; singer and music composer Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, who was known as Hemant Kumar; musician and composer Pandit Ravi Shankar; Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini; and  French film director and critic Eric Rohmer on their birth centenary. 

The line-up for the Indian Competition section includes Pushpendra Singh’s Laila Aur Satt Geet, Prithvi Konanur’s Pinki Elli?, Ananth Mahadevan’s Bittersweet, Subhrajit Mitra’s Avijatrik, Dr Bijukumar Damodaran’s Orangu Marangalude Veedu, and Anish Chacko’s Triple Whammy, among others. Mahadevan’s film Mai Ghat: Crime No 103/2005 won the Hiralal Sen Memorial Award for Best Film at the festival in 2019.

The International Competition section includes a host of films from across the world which include Shambala by Artykpai Suiundukov, Korlesme (Going Blind) by Haci Orman, Ghost image by Sang Jun Lee, Presumpciya Vinovnosti (The Presumption Of Guilt) by Oleg Asadulin, Bandar Band by Manijeh Hekmat and Only the Winds by Karim Kassem, among others. The Malayalam language film Aquarium by Deepesh T is the only Indian film to be featured in this section.

KIFF has also announced its line-up for a few other sections, including the Asian Select, which will be eligible for the NETPAC (The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award, as well as the Bengali Panorama. 

Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple will also be screened in the Cinema International section. The film was premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the prestigious FIPRESCI award, and then went on to win the Amplify Voices Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

While the complete programme schedule is awaited, actor Pankaj Tripathi shared the news of his short film, Laali being screened at KIFF. The film is written and directed by Abhiroop Basu.

The KIFF will be the first film festival in India to organise physical screenings. However, keeping in mind the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s festival is being organized on a much smaller scale.