Amitabh Bachchan feels ' honoured' on completing his Bollywood golden jubilee with IFFI's 50 years

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan on Thursday inaugurated Dada Saheb Phalke Award retrospective at the International Film Festival of India and exuded joy on turning 50 in the industry at a time when the festival is also in its golden jubilee edition.

"It has been 50 years of my journey in this industry since I started in 1969 and its the 50th edition of IFFI. I compliment the government for organising this," the actor said during his inaugural speech here.

The Dada Saheb Award retrospective will honour the work of one of the most celebrated stars in the Hindi film industry. Expressing his happiness and gratitude on being rewarded with an award so "prestigious", Big B said, "I feel deeply humbled and honoured and want to thank the Government of India for this prestigious award."

"My very first film was shot here and ever since then we have had many opportunities to work in this wonderful place and receive the hospitality during our shootings," he continued.

With a career spanning over half a century and a number of films in his work credits, Bachchan continued expressing his views of cinema terming it a "universal medium, one that is beyond language and all kinds of other factors that keep coming into our lives."

He went on to share his views on one of his films which would be showcased this afternoon at the festival - 'Paa', which follows the story of a 12-year old boy suffering from a rare disorder Progeria.

"Progeria is a terrible disease that children go through where they age very rapidly and by the age of 12, they start looking and behaving like people who are almost 75 years old, most of them perish after the age of 13," he explained.

Complimenting the film's director R. Balki on coming up with such an amazing script and idea, he added, "R. Balki not only thought that he could project onscreen what progeria is all about but also build a wonderfully emotional, lovely, entertaining story around it."

"Every time I work with him, he comes across various ideas and I keep asking him 'how the hell are you going to be able to execute this and what the heck have you been drinking before you thought this'," the 77-year old joked.

Speaking further, he continued, "'Paa' actually means father in any other language and because its R. Balki, he wanted my son to play my father!"

The festival which commenced on Wednesday was inaugurated by Bachchan and south superstar Rajinikanth along with Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.

Hosted by filmmaker Karan Johar, the opening day ceremony honoured Amitabh and Rajinikanth with 'Icon of Golden Jubilee Award' and French actor Isabelle Huppert was presented the Lifetime Achievement award for a 'foreign artiste'.

IFFI 2019 will showcase over 200 films from 76 countries, which includes 26 feature films and 15 non-feature films in the Indian panorama section. John Bailey, cinematographer and former President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will head the International Jury of IFFI.