MUMBAI: The eighth Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), to be held from 7-14 December, will, in its ‘Celebration of Indian Cinema‘ programme, will feature three world premieres, two international premieres and several first-ever regional screenings of films in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali.
"With our selection this year, we wanted to bring the true diversity of Indian cinema to DIFF," said DIFF consultant for the subcontinent programme Dorothee Wenner.
The celebration will flag off with the premiere of Yash Raj Films‘ Ladies vs Ricky Bahl on 8 December. The film, directed by Maneesh Sharma depicts the story of suave and charismatic conman Ricky Bahl (Ranveer Singh) who makes a living by deceiving women until he meets his match in the form of Anushka Sharma‘s character.
Also making its world premiere will be Shalini Usha Nair‘s Palas In Bloom (Akam), based on renowned author Malayattoor Ramakrishnan‘s celebrated Malayalam novel Yakshi. Debutant director Muthusamy Sakthivel‘s Tamil film Life is a Game (Maithanam) will also make its international premiere at the festival.
Srijit Mukherji‘s 7th August (Baishe Srabon), that will also making its international premiere, explores the dark underbelly of Kolkata. On the other hand, Karan Gour‘s Corrode (Kshay), that makes its Middle East premiere, is a psycho drama based on the story of a woman‘s need for an unfinished sculpture that blossoms into an obsession.
Competing in DIFF‘s Muhr AsiaAfrica Awards for feature films will be Kaushik Ganguly‘s Laptop that shows how a single commodity - a laptop - connects several lives and narratives as it changes hands to change lives. The film will make its international premiere at DIFF.
Also, making its world premiere and contending in the Muhr Asia Africa Awards for short films would be Rohit Pandey‘s Safe (Mehfuz) that depicts the story of a city shaken by violence, a man who looks after its dead, and a woman wandering its empty streets.
Vying for honours in DIFF‘s Muhr AsiaAfrica Awards for documentary films will be Sandeep Ray‘s Sound of Old Rooms (Kokkho-Poth) and Anand Patwardhan‘s Jai Bhim Comrade which follows the music and the tradition of Vilas Ghogre, a leftist poet and singer, who hung himself in protest against the deseceration of Dr Babasheb Ambedkar‘s statue. Both films will be screened in the Middle East for the first time at DIFF.
