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National

Mumbai film festival opens

Special Correspondent

— Photo: PTI

Shyam Benegal, Yash Chopra and Govind Nihalani (far right) at the inauguration of the 10th MAMI film festival in Mumbai on Thursday.

MUMBAI: Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s ‘Katyn’ opened the 10th Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) International Film Festival in the city on Thursday. It has been nominated for the best foreign language film in this year’s Oscars.

Produced with the most advanced technology, ‘Katyn’ is the only film not only in Poland but in the entire Europe shot on 4K technology which enables four times higher resolution post- production than the commonly used 2K process.

Six of Wajda’s films — ‘Ashes and Diamonds’, ‘Conductor’, ‘Hunting Flies’, ‘Landscape after the Battle’, ‘Man of Marble’ and ‘Man of Iron’ — will be screened as part of his retrospective. The week-long festival will screen 140 films from 45 countries, apart from a retrospective of Ritwik Ghatak.

To mark 10 years of the festival, MAMI will have a host of awards and events ranging from a Global Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be given to Spanish director Carlos Saura, and a new initiative by Jaya Bachchan who, is one of the trustees of academy.

Short film contest

Under “Dimensions Mumbai,” a short film competition introduced by her, digital films of five-minute duration depicting various aspects of Mumbai are invited from people under 25. The best entry will receive a cash prize of Rs 1.5 lakh.

Director Istvan Szabo’s ‘Relatives’, China’s ‘Fearless’ by director Yu Rentai and Christian Mungio’s ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days’ are some of the highlights of the festival.

Indian films ‘Chak De,’ and Tale of a River by Samir Chanda will feature in a separate section.

The awards ceremony on the final night will see actors Dharmendra and Rishi Kapoor, and writers Gulzar and Hitendra Ghosh being felicitated for their contributions to the industry.

Screening of ‘Kanal’ by Wajda and ‘To each of his own Cinema from France’, a work by 35 directors to celebrate 60 years of the Cannes festival, is a special feature.

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