Romanian movie 'Sieranevada' ends 7th Jagran Film Festival

The Asian Premiere of Romanian movie "Sieranevada", which was one of the competitive movies at the Cannes Film Festival, ended the seventh edition of Jagran Film Festival here on Tuesday.

The five-day festival was attended by Indian and Pakistani filmmakers, veteran actors and producers.

Inaugurated by veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah, along with ace filmmakers Ketan Mehta, Jahnu Barua and Sudhir Mishra, it saw the presence of composer Sandesh Shandilya, film editor Ballu Saluja, cinematographer Avinash Arun, actors Manoj Bajpai, Rajkummar Rao, Randeep Hooda, Taapsee Pannu, Rajit Kapur and filmmaker Anand L.Rai among others.

With a combination of coffee table discussions in the morning on topics like "Regional cinema and its challenges", "Our cinema, their cinema", "Finding money for films" and "Is cinema over regulated?", the festival showcased content based regional, Pakistani and other international, critically acclaimed films for the cinema lovers of Delhi.

The session on regional cinema with Manoj Srivastava, Rakesh Chaturvedi Om, Sabyasachi Mohapatra and Nitin Chandra had a deep discussion about regional cinema, its impact and importance in Indian Cinema.

On the other hand a discussion was held where Pakistani filmmakers like Khalid Ahmad and Shahbaz Khan exchanged their view points and gave the Indian audience a glimpse of what happens on the film industry on the other side of the border.

International short films where some left the cinema lover thinking, like "The Interview" (Russian), "Inner Conflict" (Netherlands), "3 Colours" (Iran) and "Someone Else's Shadow" (Belgium) among others were brought fourth at the festival for the movie goers to watch.

The festival also tried to bridge the gap between India and Pakistan with oodles of films to watch from across the border clubbed with short Indian films made by six Indian filmmakers like Tigmanshu Dhulia, leaving immense amount of food for thought and knowledge on the working style of cinema other than Hindi cinema.

The five-day Delhi leg of the film festival, which took place at the Sri Fort Auditorium, showcased 105 films including "Paanch", "Waiting", "Aligarh", "Natsamrat", "Talvar", "Sarbjit", "Airlift", "Nil Battey Sannata" and "Neerja".

The auditoriums were packed with individuals of all ages throughout.

The festival is now set to travel to different cities like Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varansi, Agra, Meerut, Dehradun, Hisar, Ludhiana, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Raipur, Indore, and Bhopal. The final leg of the festival will take place in Mumbai.

--IANS

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