The curtain came down on the maiden edition of the Pondicherry International Film Festival 2018, which served up a veritable feast of global cinema for movie buffs culminating in an event-filled awards ceremony on Sunday at the Alliance Francaise auditorium.
The notable winners on awards night were Turup (Checkmate/Hindi) by Ektara Colectove which tied with the national award-winning To Let (Tamil) (Chezhiyan) for the best feature film.
Turup also bagged the best screenplay (Feature/Maheen Mirza and Rinchin Rinchin) and best cinematography (Feature) awards while To Let also picked up Best Director (Feature) and Best Editing awards (Feature/A. Sreekar Prasad).
Roster’s variety
Turup is based on chess, with roadside games bringing together men, to challenge each other in friendly and sometimes unfriendly matches. But for some, the pawns include morality and religion causing tensions to erupt.
To Let narrates the story of a couple with a child which is set in 2007 in Chennai at a time when the city is experiencing a real estate boom as a result of an exponential development of the IT sector.
Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy, who along with actor Adil Hussain presented the awards, pledged full support by the Government to make the event a bigger affair from next year.
Sahar Soleimani from Iran won the best short fiction film category for Isolated Crows of Solitude and Linda Dombrovszky of Hungary bagged the special jury award for Cubeman , while the award for best short animation film went to Numan Ayaz of Turkey for Blue Tomorrow and Machines by Rahul Jain was adjudged best documentary.
Abhishek Sinha, Founder & CEO, Pickurflick, said the maiden edition of the festival witnessed a record turnout and cine buffs witnessed some of the gems of world cinema.
Good reception
“We are honoured and humbled to see the kind of response we have got from our patrons and fans,” he said. The five-day event was supported by the Tourism Department, Alliance Francaise and the French Consulate.
Movies were screened across Puducherry at multiple locations: Alliance Française de Pondichéry, Multimedia Center Auditorium in association with Cinema Paradiso (Auroville) & Aurofilm (Auroville), and J N Auditorium, Pondicherry University.
Saibal Chatterjee, festival director added, “The response the first edition of the film festival has received from cineastes in the city augurs well for the future...it gives us confidence that PIFF is here to stay”.
The festival's competition section featured a diverse slate of five animation films, nine feature films, nine documentary and seven short films, 15 films in the genres of drama and one each in thriller, fantasy family horror segments.
The bouquet represented cinema of 16 countries. PIFF closed with a jam session by Jerry Silvester Vincent, music producer of A.R. Rahman and crew.
He played the full original soundtrack of a nominee in the short film category - Asmad (Me).
This was followed by a performance from Poojarini Chowdhury’s Red Feet Dance Studio, a city-based dance troupe.
