IFFK 2015 to feature 20 films handpicked by Shaji N Karun

The 20th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala, to be held here from December 4-11, will feature 20 movies that have been handpicked by renowned filmmaker Shaji N Karun.
The films, selected by the "Piravi" director, have been compiled into three categories - "First Look" featuring debutant filmmakers from around the world, "Women Power" on stories told from the point of view of women and "Based on True Stories", which are movie adaptations of real-life people and events.
"We were looking for movies that followed their own unique aesthetics and ways to tell their stories," Karun, also the chairman of IFFK 2015 advisory committee, said here.

"The movies selected connect with the heart first, and then goes in for cerebral processing," he said.
With "First Look", Karun envisioned a category that conceptualised how "the idea of new generation movies is conceived among global film fraternity."
"This category aims to create a reference point for our society to relate their idea of new generation films against how it's understood elsewhere," the national award-winning director said.

The "Women Power" section was created to juxtapose the traditional patriarchal structures and biases against life through a woman's eye. The seven films in this section - not all by women filmmakers - dwell on the female psyche.

"The films in this category address their universal pain, the importance of family and its bonds and also explore the lives of women from different cultural milieus all over the world," he said.
In the "True Story" category are six movies that have followed the adage that "truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.' "Each has basis in real life events and experiences - which are narrated through visual expressions."
Noting that the section and genre "may get classified as docu-fiction," Karun said "more the drama of a real-life incident, the creative energy used to identify a movie from that real-life experience is what I considered important while selecting movies for this category."

The common thread to each sub-category is "identification of the humanness with its pleasure and pain by filmmakers around the world," the directed added.