53rd Edition of IFFI All Set to Begin from November 20

Goa: The 53rd edition of IFFI, the International Film Festival of India is all set to open to a colorful opening ceremony at Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium, Taleigão in Goa on Sunday. This edition of the festival will showcase 280 films from 79 countries.

The Austrian film, Alma and Oskar, directed by Dieter Berner, will open the festival. As many as 25 feature films and 19 non-feature films from India will be showcased in the ‘Indian Panorama’ while 183 films will be a part of international programming.

The festival presents a special section for Asha Parekh, the 52nd Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner. On the occasion of the completion of 50 years of Manipuri Cinema, a specially curated package of five Feature and five Non-Feature films, curated by the Manipur State Film Development Society, will be screened.

Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement award is being conferred on Spanish film director Carlos Saura. France is the ‘Spotlight’ country and 8 films will be screened under the Country Focus package.

Accessibility is one of the prominent aspects of this edition of the Film Festival. In addition to the various physical amenities to make the festival venue barrier-free, IFFI also features a Divyangjan Special Section and special academic sessions, to make the festival more inclusive and accessible for specially-abled (Divyangjan) film enthusiasts.

In this section, dedicated screenings for the specially-abled audience will be organized keeping in mind their accessibility needs in terms of formats of film screening and venue infrastructure, and management.

The films in this section will have embedded subtitles, as well as audio descriptions. The audio descriptions are specially created audio tracks that narrate the visual information in a film.

Films, like Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning Gandhi and The Storyteller directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, will be premiered at IFFI in the ‘Divyangjan’ section.