About 80 films from 20 countries will be screened at the Fourth Thrissur International Film Festival (TIFF-2009), beginning here on Friday.
Director P. Ramdas will inaugurate the festival to be held at the Kairali and Sree theatres. The Hindi film, ’Road to Sangam’, directed by Amit Rai, will open the festival. He, Amit Chadha, producer of film, and Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi who has played a part in it, will attend the function.
Contemporary films to be screened include Alireza Raisian’s ’Havana File’ (Iran) Bahram Beizai’s ’Bashu: The Little Stranger’ (Iran), Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s ’Home’, Fulvio Bernasconi’s ’Out of Bounds’ (Italy), Cao Hamburger’s ’The Year My Parents Went on Vacation’ (Portgual) , Carlos Reygadas’ ’Silent Light’ (Spain) and Annemarie Jacir’s ’Salt of This Sea’.
A retrospective of the works of Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui will be held. It will include ’Leila’ (1996), ’Derakht-e Golabi’ (1998) and ’Santouri’ (2007).
Films by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima will be another attraction. They include ’Death by Hanging’ (1968), ’Diary of a Shinjuku Thief’ (1969), ’The Ceremony’ (1971) and ’Dear Summer Sister’ (1972).
A retrospective of the works of Ferenc Moldoványi will include ’The Way’ (1997), ’Children Kosovo’ (2001) and ’Another Planet’ (2008).
A package of Indian classics will include Bimal Roy’s ’Do Bigha Zameen’, K. Asif’s ’Mughal-e-Azam’, A. Vincent’s ’Bhargaveenilayam’ and P. Bhaskaran’s ’Nayaru Pidicha Pulivaalu’.
A section devoted to French films will include ’Not Here To be Loved’ (2005), ’Two Ladies’ (2007), ’Those Who Remained’ (2007) and ’The Last of the Crazy’ (2006).
The festival will pay tribute to writer-director Lohithadas, producer Sobhana Parameswaran Nair, actor Murali and director Shakti Samanta by screening their films, ’Bhoothakkannadi’, ’Ninamaninja Kalpadukal’, ’Ghershome’ and ’Howrah Bridge’.
