The much awaited MAMI fest is near and its celebrity trustees including Karan Johar, Zoya Akhtar, Rohan Sippy, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Manish Mundra, Vishal Bhardwaj, Dibakar Banerjee joined Co-chairperson, Kiran Rao and Festival Director Anupama Chopra to announce its line-up of documentaries, short films and features to be showcased at the festival. The line-up boasts of 180 films from 54 countries with new award categories like Best film for Gender Equality with prize money of Rs 10 lakh instituted in partnership with Oxfam India and the MAMI MasterCard Best Indian Female Filmmaker 2016 award with prize money of 15 lakh rupees. The Word to Screen Market puts book publishers and content creators into the same room and the book award now includes books on cinema in Hindi also. Also the new Jio MAMI with Star logo was unveiled by actress Kangana Ranaut.
The ‘Excellence in Cinema Award’ will be conferred to the noted Indian film director and screenwriter of several award winning movies like Sparsh and Chashme Baddoor, Sai Paranjpye while Jia Zhangke, known as the leading figure of the “Sixth Generation” movement in Chinese Cinema will be the recipient of the International Excellence in Cinema Award.
Director Zoya Akhtar announced the jury for the India Gold competitive section carrying prize money of Rs 45 lakh –which includes composer Mychael Danna (Life of Pi), Time magazine film critic Stephanie Zacharek, Taiwanese film director and photographer Yonfan and the head of the jury, Turkish film director Reha Erdem.
Director and scriptwriter Vikramaditya Motwane announced the jury for International Competition which also carries award money of 45 lakhs. The jury includes Film maker Anurag Kashyap, Producer Christine Vachon (Carol, Still Alice and Boys Don’t Cry), Chris McDonald, President of Hot Docs- the largest documentary film festival in North America, Writer Director and photographer Tala Hadid(‘Tes Cheveux Noirs Ihsan’ won her an Academy Award) and the Head of the Jury is Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes(‘The Arabian Nights Trilogy’).
The International Selection includes ‘I, Daniel Blake’ by Ken Loach, ‘Swiss Army Man’ by Daniels, ‘Certain Women’ by Kelly Reichardt, ‘Graduation’ by Cristian Mungiu, ‘Things to Come’ by Mia Hansen-Love, ‘Elle’ by Paul Verhoeven, ‘Neruda’ by Pablo Larrain, ‘Mostly Sunny- A Documentary on Sunny Leone’ by Dilip Mehta and ‘Hema Hema: Sing Me A Song While I Wait’ by Khyentse Norbu from Bhutan.
The Indian titles include ‘A Death in the Gunj’ the debut directorial effort from Konkona Sen Sharma, ‘Lady of the Lake’ by Haobam Paban Kumar, ‘Loev’ by Sudhanshu Saria, ‘Autohead’ by Rohit Mittal, ‘The Cinema Travellers’ by Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya, ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’ by Alankrita Shrivastav.
Kiran Rao was visibly excited about the forthcoming show “It’s been a very exciting year for the Academy. In our effort to have a year around presence, we launched the MAMI Film Club in May with a conversation between Sir Ian McKellen and Aamir and followed that up with India premieres of films such as Brahman Naman and India in a Day.”
Festival Director, Anupama Chopra promised, “This year’s Festival will also be bigger and hopefully better. The MAMI Movie Mela will be for two days, the section for children ‘Half Ticket’ will be open to the public on certain days and our experimental film section, now called The New Medium, includes some very exciting titles that offer new ways of seeing film. The Academy is committed to bringing you great film content and conversations.”
