BENGALURU: It’s been a good year for Kannada cinema, and now it’s making waves internationally also. Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM), which is from August 11-20, has a lineup of critically acclaimed Kannada films. Celebrating the cinematic brilliance and storytelling prowess of the Kannada film industry, IFFM, an annual celebration of Indian cinema held in Melbourne, Australia, has been trying to create a platform for regional movies this year.
Mitu Bhowmick Lange, director and founder of IFFM, says there is a huge diaspora who love watching films in different languages and Kannada is among them. “Kannada is such a major industry that churns out brilliant content year after year. Even our festival screenings of all the Kannada films are always filled. There’s a huge demand for films from languages of southern India, and they have a loyal following even amongst those who are settled here,” says Bhowmick-Lange.
The movies are being curated by the jury of IFFM. “Our amazing team scouts for some of the best films from across the Indian subcontinent. What we are most proud of is the diversity of films, languages, genres and formats we screen at IFFM. This year alone we have over 100 films curated for both in-person and online screenings in films across 25 languages. The idea is to promote Indian cinema that is inclusive and that is the centrepiece of our film curation,” she explains. She adds, “This year, we have this amazing Kannada film Hadinelentu, which has been nominated for Best Film, Prithvi Konanur for Best Director and Akshatha Pandavapura has been nominated for Best Actress for Koli Esru.”
Some of the Kannada movies selected:
Hadinelentu (Seventeeners) (Feature Film): Director Prithvi Konanur’s movie is about a selfie sex video of two 17-year-olds shot in a classroom on the college campus that gets leaked on the internet, leading to irreparable damage in the lives of every stakeholder.
Kaadina Jeevantike (Spirit of the Forest) (Short Film): Kaadina Jeevantike, directed by Nandini Rao, Nirupa Rao, and Kalp Sanghvi is a poignant short film, which tells the tale of a little girl who stumbles into a sacred grove near her village in south India. She disturbs the spirit of the forest, which takes her on an adventure through time to illuminate the origins of this ancient swamp and her place in its continuing legacy. Koli Esru (Chicken Curry) (Feature Film): Directed by Champa Shetty Koli Esru, the movie follows the life of Hucheeri, who is made to marry a drunkard by her stepmother. She undergoes many difficulties just to provide her beloved ten-year-old daughter a the taste of chicken curry.
Shivamma (Feature Film): Directed by Jaishankar Arya, the movie is about Shivamma, a poverty-stricken woman from a remote village in north Karnataka, who wants to make it big by investing in a chain scheme business, which puts her daughter’s imminent marriage at stake.
IFFM is gearing up to host some of the most well-known names from the Hindi film industry like Karan Johar, Mrunal Thakur, Kartik Aaryan, Saiyami Kher, Angad Bedi, Abhishek Bachchan, R Balki, Anurag Kashyap and Sunny Leone to name few. Veteran star Shabana Azmi will be hoisting the Indian flag to commemorate the 77th Independence Day.