MAMI announces Indian line-up for virtual film festival, its first

The 22nd edition of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival has announced its official selection of films that will be screened virtually.

The much-awaited festival was earlier slated to be held in March, but plans for an on-ground event have been shelved. The festival was last held in 2019.

MAMI announced its pivot on Instagram, saying, 'Infinite possibilities are inherent in chaos. We had to sit out the March edition of the festival but are proud to announce the Indian line-up of films today. Some of the titles out of the selection will be available across February and March on our partner platform shift72vod. This might not be the beginning we wanted, but it marks a start. The journey in unfurling the altering and evolving experience that viewing has become during the pandemic continues.

'Our official selection will be announced this evening. The schedule for the ones we will screen digitally will be out tomorrow.'

With this, the festival has announced its line-up of Indian films for the sections India Gold, Spotlight, Gala Premieres, In Focus Shorts and City Shorts Mumbai.

The competitive India Gold section includes Payal Kapadia’s A Night Of Knowing Nothing, Gurvinder Singh’s Adh Chanani Raat, Prantik Basu’s Bela, Achal Mishra’s Dhuin, Ritwik Pareek’s Dug Dug, Ajitpal Singh’s Fire In The Mountains, Natesh Hegde’s Pedro, Rahul Jain’s Invisible Demons, Rebana Liz John’s Ladies Only, Haobam Paban Kumar’s Nine Hills One Valley, Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s Once Upon A Time In Calcutta, Irfana Majumdar’s Shankar’s Fairies, Rahat Mahajan’s The Cloud Messenger and Prasun Chatterjee’s Two Friends.

The Spotlight section includes Faraz Ali’s Shoebox, Samarth Mahajan’s Borderlands, Srishti Lakhera’s Once Upon A Village, Abhilash Shetty’s The Chicken Curry, Shlok Sharma’s Two Sisters And A Husband, among others.

Agam Darshi’s Donkeyhead, Aparna Sen’s The Rapist, Aditya Sarpotdar’s Unaad, Ajitesh Sharma’s WOMB (Women Of My Billion) are the Gala Premieres while Varun Grover’s Kiss, Megha Ramaswamy’s Lalanna’s Song and Soumyak Kanti DeBiswas’s The Daughter are the selections for In Focus Shorts.

The competitive section for shorts, City Shorts Mumbai, includes About Balika by Satyajeet Rajenimbalkar, Bhardol by Dinesh Choudhary, Cameraman Devdutt Ke Saath Govind Ahuja by Kartik Hegde, Dharavi To Bollywood by Harsh Matondkar, Museum Of Memories by Navneet Mishra, Sarhad Wale Daddy by Snehal Garg and The Intruder by Rihen Shah.

A few of the titles selected will be made available virtually across February and March 2022. The festival will soon share the screening schedule.