'From Blighty With Love' Fest to start Feb 26

Mumbai, Nov 3 : The "From Blighty with Love" Festival to showcase recent independent British films across Indian screens will commence Feb 26 next year.

Announced at the ongoing Mumbai Film Festival (MFF), which runs Oct 29-Nov 5, the British-Indian film distribution initiative will be held simultaneously across Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune till March 11, 2010.

The gala will also see a "virtual" in-conversation with key talents from each film via the Skype technology.

"'From Blighty with Love' is an exciting example of the UK Film Council's drive to open up UK film to international markets and audiences. It will showcase some of the best UK independent features of the last 18 months none of which have ever been seen on the big screen before in India," Sarah McKenzie, senior executive for export development of the UK Film Council, said in a statement.

Some of the movies that will be screened at the event include "Easy Virtue", "Brideshead Revisited", "Man On Wire" and "In the Loop", etc apart from those of renowned filmmakers like Michael Winterbottom, Sally Potter and Danny Boyle.

'From Blighty with Love' will be delivered by the UK Film Council with the help of project partners, UK Trade and Investment, MFF, Book My Show and Reliance Media Works. Property partners for the same include Big and Fame Cinemas.

'Blighty' is an English term for Britain, deriving from the Hindustani word vilayati.