Mahesh Narayanan's Ariyippu to have world premiere at Locarno Film Festival

Mahesh Narayanan's Ariyippu (Declaration), starring Kunchacko Boban, Divya Prabha, Lovleen Misra and Danish Husain, will have its world premiere at the 75th Locarno Film Festival.

The Malayalam feature is one of 15 films that will be screened in the International Competition section. Mahesh, who has made the films Take Off (2017), C U Soon (2020) and Maalik (2021), has written and directed Ariyippu. which was shot earlier this year.

The 75th edition of the Swiss festival will also honour Indian filmmaker Gitanjali Rao who is on the jury for the Filmmakers of the Present section. Rao’s award-winning animated short film Printed Rainbow (2006) will be screened in the open-air Piazza Grande arena which seats 8,000, while her debut feature-length animated film Bombay Rose (2019) will also be screened in the Locarno Kids section as part of the filmmaker's Locarno Kids Award la Mobiliare honour.

This year, the festival will screen 226 feature-length and short films from 113 countries and drawn from 4,245 submissions. Locarno, which is being held from 3 to 13 August, will open with David Leitch’s Bullet Train (2022) starring Brad Pitt.