National

Over 100 films to be screened in IFFI

PANAJI: Veteran actor Rekha will open the 39th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here on Saturday in the presence of Union Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Anand Sharma, Goa Governor S. S. Sidhu and Chief Minister Digambar Kamat.

Telugu actor Illina DCruz will be the special guest for the opening ceremony. The 10-day festival will have over 200 screenings of over 100 films from nearly 40 countries. A record number of around 6,000 delegates are expected to participate in the festival which continues to be jointly organised by Goa government’s entertainment Society of Goa and Directorate of Film Festivals under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The festival will open with Chinese film ‘The Warlords,’ by filmmaker Peter Chan at the picturesque Kala Academy complex while the festival will come to a close on December 2 with the screening of Iranian film ‘The song of the sparrows,’ directed by Majid Majidi. Veteran actor Kamal Hassan will be the chief guest for the closing ceremony.

Films from Asia, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa will be screened in the competition section, which will be judged by a jury headed by noted Hong Kong film director Peter Chan. Other jury members include Marco Muller (Venice), Niki Karimi (Iran), Lav Diaz (Singapore) and Tabassum Hashmi (India).

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