Cinevesture International Film Festival (CIFF), the first international film festival to be held in Chandigarh from March 27-31, announces its film lineup.
The opening film of the festival is Cannes award-winning French film The Taste of Things starring Juliette Binoche. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Anh Hung Tran, the historical romantic drama won the award for Best Director in the Cannes Film Festival, 2023. The closing film will be South Korea’s highest grossing film of 2024 till date - the horror-mystery-thriller Exhuma (Pamyo) which got premiered at 2024 Berlinale.
Both the opening and closing films will have their India premieres at the festival and shall be open air screenings in the Government Museum & Arts Gallery, Sector 10, the main venue of CIFF 2024.
The festival will showcase 24 award-winning international features in the World Cinema section, 17 indie gems in the India Unveiled, 27 shorts in Brief Encounters, a curated section of children’s films and timeless Classics.
The programming highlights will include internationally acclaimed films like 2024 Oscar contender Holocaust drama, The Zone of Interest, Palme d'Or Winner and Academy Nominee Hirokazu Kore-eda's Monster, 2023 Academy Award-winner, The Whale starring Brendan Fraser, a gripping documentary which won at Berlinale, Seven Winters in Tehran, Singapore's Oscar entry, Breaking Ice, the Roshan Mathew starrer Paradise, and the animation feature Sultana’s Dreams among others.
Award-winning Indian features and docs such as Toronto International Film Festival winner Marathi film Sthal, Venice Film Festival film Stolen, Rima Das’ Assamese film Tora’s Husband, Deepa Mehta’s TIFF film, I am Sirat, auteur filmmaker Gurvinder Singh’s Punjabi feature Adh Chanani Raat, Harjit Singh’s documentary on the late Punjabi painter and writer Imroz-A Walk Down The Memory Lane, Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Malayalam film Malaikottai Vaaliban, Sreemoyee Singh’s documentary, And, Towards Happy Alleys, an ode to Iranian cinema and poetry featuring Jafar Panahi, Varun Grover’s short Kiss and the Riz Ahmed starrer short Dammi.
International features, Roleless, The Tenants will have India Premieres at the festival and short films Dammi and Suddenly TV will have their Asia Premiere.
A host of prominent faces from the B-town like Richa Chadha, Ali Fazal, Roshan Mathew, Gulshan Devaiah, Varun Grover, Rasika Duggal, Rashmeet Kaur (singer), Hansal Mehta, Shekhar Kapur, Sudhir Mishra, and Tahira Kashyap Khurrana among others, are said to attend the festival.
The opening and closing films will be open air screenings in the Government Museum & Arts Gallery, Sector 10, the main venue of CIFF 2024. Three more Open Air screenings are scheduled of the classics Jalsaghar (Satyajit’s Ray’s 1958 musical), Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) and The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020), a recut of the original Godfather 3 by Francis Ford Coppola to mark the 30th anniversary of the film. The open air screen is 60 feet wide.
An experiential cinema exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand is being set up in the Rose Garden Underpass in collaboration with National Film Archives (NFDC) and students of Chandigarh College of Architecture. A screening of Children’s films is open to all children from the ages of 10-17 years at 9 am each day from 27-31 March 2024 at Cinepolis Jagat.
This inaugural edition of the festival will also feature CIFF/market to facilitate the business and craft of filmmaking. More than 15 curated projects by creators with a strong presence in the Indian film industry are being presented at CIFF/market. CIFF will also feature workshops, master classes and panel discussions for the benefit of festival and industry delegates.
VS Kundu IAS (Retd) and a former Head of the National Films Division of India has come aboard as the Director of the Film Festival and industry veteran Ms Bina Paul as the artistic director of CIFF.
The advisory board of CIFF has the presence of Baahubali star and leading film producer, Rana Daggubati, Jerome Paillard who served as Head of the Cannes Film Market, Festival de Cannes from 1995 to 2022, Nicole Guillemet, former Co-Director of Sundance Film Festival, the celebrated Indian filmmaker Ajitpal Singh (Fire in the Mountains and Tabbar) and other experts in the field of film making.
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