Pune: In a significant acquisition, the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) added a collection of prize-winning foreign films to its trove, comprising the best of world cinema.
All the titles are internationally acclaimed, having been praised at prestigious festivals like the Cannes Film Festival, the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), and the Robert Awards (the Danish equivalent of the Academy Awards).
The collection includes three films from France: Lemming (2005), LesInvasions Barbares (2003) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005); L’enfant (2005) from Belgium; Danish political thriller Kongekabale (2004), and Gori Vatra (2004), from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The films were acquired from Narayan Srinivasan, a resident of Mumbai.
Lemming is a psychological thriller, starring British actress Charlotte Rampling. It follows a strange dinner party, after which the attendees make discoveries about their seemingly well-ordered hosts. LesInvasions Barbares or ‘The Barbarian Invasions’, directed by Denys Arcand, is a comedy-drama structured around a terminally-ill professor who attempts to reconcile with his son, a man with a radically different outlook towards life. The film bagged the Academy Award in 2003 under the Best Foreign Language Film category.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped, by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, follows the life of a deceitful young realtor and his dream of becoming a concert pianist.
Gori Vatra or ‘Fuse’ (2003), a comedy-drama, depicts the aftermath of the Bosnian War and then United States President Bill Clinton’s impending visit to the war-torn region.
The Dardenne brothers’ (Jean-Pierre and Luc) heart-rending social drama l’enfant bagged the Palme D’Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. It revolves around a young couple trying to fend for themselves.
A second lot was acquired from the Iranian Embassy in Mumbai. The collection includes acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Peddler (1989), and the documentary The Afghan Alphabet (2002). The Peddler (or ‘Dastforosh’ in the original Iraninan), which transposed stories by Italian author Alberto Moravia and set them in Iran, drew the world’s attention to Mr. Makhmalbaf’s talent, and can be considered his breakthrough film.
Other titles include Pouran Derakhshandeh’s Wet Dream (2005) and Shahram Assadi’s Avinar (1991).
Prakash Magdum, Director, NFAI, said, “We are proud to have a representative collection of world cinema, and are thrilled to acquire these notable titles, which have immensely enriched our collection.”
