For a change, the gender skew was in women’s favour right down to the children’s jury. Of the 12 members of the “Half Ticket” jury on stage at the opening ceremony of the Mumbai Film Festival organised by the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI), nine were girls.
The dominance of women was visible in other juries as well. The international competition is headed this year by Ava Duvernay, the director of Selma , the celebrated film on Martin Luther King.
No surprise because in its 17th year, the festival has become a show managed by three dynamic women — festival director Anupama Chopra, chairperson Kiran Rao and co-chair Nita M. Ambani. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. is the presenter of the festival.
The show was inaugurated by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at a function held under the majestic shadow of the Gateway of India swathed in a purple glow with many a star in attendance — Hrithik Roshan, Irrfan Khan, Vidya Balan, Aalia Bhatt, A.R. Rahman, Prasoon Joshi, Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj and many more. Rahman has composed the signature tune of the festival.
Mr. Fadnavis pointed out the symbolic significance of holding the event at Gateway — that it was a show of Mumbai’s resilience, an assertion that the ‘Maximum City’ can celebrate without fear, invoking 26/11. But it was for Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai, who was presented the lifetime achievement award, to briefly underline the politics in art. He spoke of how he would often disagree with the policies of his country and still love it — which, for him, defined being a film-maker. “A filmmaker cannot be a PR instrument but someone who engages with the culture of his land,” he said.
The festival this year is marked by a wonderful selection of contemporary Indian films especially from young film-makers — Raam Reddy’s debut Thithi , Ruchika Oberoi’s first film Island City , Abhay Kumar's experimental Placebo , M. Manikandan’s sophomore effort after Kaaka Muttai , Vetrimaaran’s Visaaranai and Gurvinder Singh’s Chauthi Koot .
The opening film was Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh , inspired by the life of Shrinivas Ramachandra Siras, who was ousted from Aligarh Muslim University for homosexuality and was later found dead under mysterious circumstances.
