THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the themes of love and war, 86 movies, predominantly from Europe and Asia, will be screened in the Global category at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) which will get underway on March 18.
Films from over 60 counties have made it to the list. The World Cinema category will feature many award-winning films, including the Oscar-nominated ‘Drive My Car’. The Cannes Film Festival winners such as the ‘Ripples of Life’, ‘Prayers For The Stolen’ and ‘Ahed’s Knee’; the Venice Film Festival winner, ‘Sun Children’, and ‘Brighton 4th’, which has won various awards including the coveted Best Film title at the Asian World Film Festival are some of the movies that will be screened in this category.
The two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Hero’, Radu Jude’s ‘Bad Luck Banging’ and Carlos Suara’s musical drama ‘The King of All the World’ are among the movies that will be screened under this category. The participation of 23 women filmmakers in this category is another highlight this year.
Two Indian films — Natesh Hegde’s debut film ‘Pedro’ and ‘Two Friends’ by Prasun Chatterjee — have also made it to this category. The films to be screened in the category indicate a global trend of social concern among filmmakers, organisers said.
Blerta Basholli’s Albanian-language drama ‘Hive’, which is about a widow’s fight against a patriarchal system; Manolo Nieto’s Spanish drama ‘The Employer and the Employee’; Bolat Kalymbetov’s ‘Mukagali’, a biopic of the Kazakh poet who became the symbol of the nation’s struggle for independence; and Péter Kerekes’ ‘107 Mothers’, which depicts real-life stories of motherhood in Ukraine, are some of the movies that will be screened under this category.
The Jury Films category at the festival is another section to watch out for. Afghan filmmaker Roya Sadat’s 2017 film ‘A Letter to the President’, was Afghanistan’s official entry to the Academy Awards that year. The festival will also allow viewers to revisit Girish Kasarvalli’s debut film ‘Ghatashraddha’, based on eminent writer U R Ananthamurthy’s award-winning eponymous novella.
Women’s share
The participation of 23 women filmmakers in this category is another highlight this year