Movies lovers couldn’t have asked for more. When the 13th edition of Mumbai Film Festival organized by MAMI started on the 13th of October, the buzz was more than palpable. After all, this is the city of film makers and film lovers. And, to showcase over 200 movies over a period of eight days was no mean task, yet it was achieved. To begin with, let’s look at the major categories.
The movies in the festival were divided into various categories: International Competition, Above the Cut, World Cinema, 4th Rendezvous with French Cinema, Real Reel, Indian Frame, New Faces in Indian Cinema, Film India Worldwide, Dimensions Mumbai, Celebrate Age, Celebration of 50 Years of Cannes’ Critic’s Week, Indian Retrospective, Hugh Hudson Retrospective, MGM Channel Presentation and Lifetime Achievement Awards, Tributes and Thoughts.
The festival opened with Bennett Miller directed Moneyball starring Brad Pitt. As a manager of a baseball team, the film follows Brad Pitt’s attempts to come up with pioneering strategies of making his team bounce back despite lack of money. The movie that received an overwhelmingly positive response from the audience let loose a barrage of amazing films from near and far.
Day two’s major attractions were Bela Tarr’s Hungarian movie, The Turin Horse, an apocalyptic look at Friedrich Nietzche’s saving of a horse from getting whipped and his mysterious mental illness. The film follows the Tarr tradition with his trademark style of minimalism and reliance on long shots. Another star attraction of the day was Umesh Kulkarni’s Deool (Marathi), which tells the story of a herdsman (played by Nana Patekar), who gets a divine vision, setting roll a flurry to build a temple and set the sleepy little village on to the path of transformation. The festival also paid tribute to Satyajit Ray through his first movie, Pather Panchali.
Day three had some big ones jostling for attention and movie lovers were distraught for the fact that their eventual choice would give their cinematic sense a feast, but at the cost of sacrificing another good movie. Such, of course, are the travails of a film festival. Michel Hazanavicious’s French movie, The Artist was a big draw. The movie that is critically acclaimed this year and which also won the Best Actor at Cannes for its lead, Jean Dujardin, saw packed houses in two screenings, leading another special screening, which too, goes without saying, was packed to its brim. Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower, a story of a woman caught in the middle of idealism and diplomatic double-talk, J C Chandor’s Margin Call, starring Kevin Spacey that looks at the murky inside world of corporate sans the unnecessary flashes that accompany the usual Hollywood studio production, Generation P, the Russian film by Victor Ginzburg that’s an adaptation of cult novel by Victor Pelevin and Michael, an Austrian film by Markus Schleinzer with disturbing subject matter were the major draws. The day also saw festival saluting its Chairman with the screening of his debut film, Ankur.
