Mega Mumbai Film Festival to host 40 global buyers

The event will help production houses, film makers.

If you thought film festivals were about appreciating cinema, think again. This year, Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) seems to have sheer business on its mind. The 13th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival it is organising from October 13 to 20 will be the country’s first to host roughly 40 international movie buyers.

The event, which will screen over 200 films from 50 countries, will help Indian production houses, regional and independent film makers to reach out to foreign markets such as Germany, France, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, South Africa and Hong Kong.

“This initiative will help big and small producers to tap into traditional and non-traditional markets,” says Amit Khanna, chairman, Reliance Big Entertainment.

For this, MAMI will set up Mumbai Film Mart, which will arrange meetings and facilitate trade between Indian distributors, producers, film makers home video players and top sales agents. Overseas buyers can either buy a film or decide to represent the film maker/production house in the overseas market for a particular film or a slate of films.

Some of the big sales agents and buyers attending the event are Wild Bunch (France), IM Global (US), Nikkatsu (Japan), The Match Factory (Germany), Happinet Corporation (Japan), Rapid Eye(Germany), Wide Management (France), 1 Production Film (Taiwan), Showbox (Korea), Pioniwa (Japan), Creative Screen Associates (UK) and Danish Film Institute (Denmark). “Last year, we had five buyers, but there was huge interest in understanding the Indian market,” says Khanna.

This event will see participation also from the directors from the film festivals at Busan, Hong Kong, Copenhagen and La Rochelle.

Apart from international players, Indian Film Exporters Association, Indian Film Producers Guild, Film Federation of India, Confederation of Indian Industries, South India Film Chamber of Commerce and Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Mandal will be setting booths to promote various films with these buyers.

The film fraternity also feels it is time to develop a foreign market for Indian cinema. In the recent past, Indian films have done well in non-traditional markets like Taiwan, Korea, Germany, France, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Poland, Malaysia, Taiwan, China and Belgium.

My Name Is Khan had set a benchmark by being the first Hindi film to be released in such countries — through Fox Searchlight. Even film production houses like UTV, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Eros International and Reliance Big Pictures are now looking at Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, South Korea and France for forthcoming releases.

Last year, UTV released Rajneeti in Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, while Vinod Chopra Films released 3 Idiots in Taiwan and South Korea.

Even regional film-makers are cashing in on this trend. More than a dozen movies in an array of languages — Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Bengali and Marathi — are scheduled for launches abroad this year. Recently, Punjabi film Dharti, Tamil film Ko Mammadhan Ambu and Vinnayithaandi Varuvaayaa and Telugu film Mr Perfect were released with over 100 prints abroad. These, on an average grossed around Rs 1.5-2 crore from overseas markets.