Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Audience warms up to competition films

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The story of the first recorded rape and murder case in Kerala is the theme of Palerimanikyam, Oru Pathira Kolapathakathinte Katha, a Malayalam film directed by Ranjith, shown in the competition section of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.

The crime had happened at a time when the feudal system prevailing in this part of the country for centuries was making way for a new political power structure.

No longer is the feudal lord the master of his own destiny and the destiny of the lesser elements around him.

The film, its diction crisp and solid, goes far beyond the telling of a crime story to bring out the emotional trauma of characters trapped in a situation where the equations had changed too quickly.

Portraits in a Sea of Lies, a Colombian film by Carlos Gaviria, which too was screened in the competition section, is about displaced people longing to recover their lost roots, lost dreams.

Against the background of Colombia, a country torn by civil war for several decades, the film brings out the intensity of the human tragedy in a destabilised land by panning the camera through the experiences of a photographer and his young and mute cousin.

In a cold and unsympathetic world, where one is so totally immersed in oneself to see the truth of being, who am I? The Hindi film I Am – Afia Megha Abhimanyu Omar, directed by Onir, is an exploration into the identity of the individual in a society in which identities have ceased to be and only labels exist. This was another film screened in the competition section during the day.

The Turkish film Zephyr, directed by Belma Bas, which too was shown in the competition section during the day, tells the story of an adolescent girl longing to cling on to her mother and the mother wanting to break free to be on her own.

The complex working of a child's mind confronted with uncertainty is the theme of this film.

Fifty films were screened at the 10 festival theatres in the city under various categories such as world cinema, retrospectives, Indian cinema, competition section etc.

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