Snaking lines for films, delayed screenings, cancelled shows and restless crowds marked the first day at the Bengaluru International Film Festival (Biffes) on Friday. The festival had a lukewarm start in the morning with first shows delayed by over 45 minutes, but crowds began to swell by mid-afternoon.
Biffes organisers said that 4,000 paid passes and 5,000 passes for delegates and dignitaries were given out, taking the total to an estimated 9,000 so far. A total of 75 films were shown in 11 screens on the first day.
Visitors were queuing up for their dose of international films too. Columbian drama thriller Guilty Men , Estonian film The Polar Boy (about a young man who is forced to choose between his love for a woman and his passion for photography), and South Korean action thriller The Age of Shadows (about Korean resistance fighters) were popular choices.
But several people who had queued up to watch these films were turned away. The 2016 Kannada hit Rama Rama Re got top billing, reminding film festival regulars of the equally popular Thiti that was screened during last year’s edition of Biffes.
Another film that saw a good gathering was Thailand’s By the Time it gets Dark . But the audience was disappointed as the show was postponed thrice for 10-15 minutes each time and finally cancelled due to technical glitch. “We received a copy of the film only on Thursday night and during the show, we realised that there was no audio at all leading to cancellation,” one of the organisers said.
H.R. Vasudev, a film enthusiast who waited patiently in the queue to see the film, said he lost the chance to see any film in the slot since all other films had begun by the time people were told that this would not be screened.
Yet another deterrent was delay in providing catalogues that introduced all the films being screened at the festival. Shyam Sundar, a film enthusiast, said that the catalogue was a necessity for the audience to make an informed choice of the films to watch. The catalogues were available for a brief time around 11.30 a.m., but were soon unavailable.
