MUMBAI: HumaraMovie is associating with PVR Directors Rare- limited release arm of PVR Group to launch Indian short film festival aptly called ‘Shuruaat’.

With over 400 short film entries and 13 finalists, ‘Shuruaat’ promises to be the offspring board for budding film makers, who will be guided throughout the production and have been given access to a script consultant as well as casting, production and editing.

The chosen filmmakers have created a short film around the topic ‘Interval’. The short film festival was open to filmmakers/creative artists all across India. The idea was to bring out the ingenuity in filmmaking and to cradle the creative mind of filmmakers.

The selected participants will have their films screened in PVR as well as on HumaraMovie platforms. The winner will be decided by an audience vote for Rs 1 lakh prize money. The screened films will also get a home video release and the top two films will get a world premiere at the Ladakh International Film Festival.

Filmmakers submitted an already existing film, along with a short 150 word biography about themselves. Participants were shortlisted basis their films and were given a topic on which they submitted screenplays. Based on the screenplays, 13 finalists were shortlisted who are now producing a short film with guidance from the mentors. There is no restriction on the genre of the film. The duration of the short film will be 15 minutes inclusive of opening and end credits.

The relevance of the festival came from the statistics that showcase 15,000 films certified in a year out of which 11000 are short films. This indicates that each year, the number of documentary and short film makers in India taken as a category together rises by at least 20,000.

The participants were mentored by popular names from the industry such as Imtiaz Ali, Anand Gandhi, Vikramaditya Motwane and Imtiaz Ali, Ritesh Shah, Kshiti Nijhawan Agrawal, Bijesh Jayarajan and Mukesh Chabbra.