Chinese film 'Wheat' to open Goa IFFI

Panaji, Nov 21 : The 40th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will be inaugurated by veteran actress Waheeda Rehman at a glittering ceremony here Monday.

Chinese film "Wheat" directed by He Peng will be the opening film of the 11-day festival which will screen nearly 300 films from Nov 23 to Dec 3.

The festival will be closed by the Spanish film "Broken Embrace", directed by Pedro Almodovar. Mamoothy will be chief guest at the closing ceremony.

Addressing a press conference Saturday, Director of the Film Festivals (DFF) S.M. Khan said that the 40th edition had several new sections, apart from the trademark sections like Indian Panorama, Indian premiere, country focus, continent focus, retrospectives, homages and tributes, cinema of the world, environment awards, short-films etc. "The 40th edition will see several new sections including spoof films, Telugu musical hits, celebration of 75 years of Assamese cinema among others," Khan said.

"Legendary actress Waheeda Rehman, Tamil actress Asin and union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni will be present at the inauguration ceremony on Monday," Khan said. The 'cinema of the world' section will showcase more than 55 films from 476 countries.

Two Indian entries -- Atanu Ghosh's Bengali film "Angshumaner Chhobi" and Satish Manwar's Marathi film "Gabricha Paus" -- have been selected for the competition section, which has 13 other films from Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Kazakhstan, Iran, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Argentina.

The jury for the competition section is headed by noted director from Brazil, Joao Batista de Andrade. Other members of the jury are Vic Sarin (Canada), Kenichi Okubu (Tokyo), Sarika (India) and Jean-Michel Frodon (France).

Films from Croatia, Estonia, Italy and Poland will be featured in the country focus section.

The retrospective section includes films by Indian-origin director Gurinder Chaddha, Nonzee Nimibutr (Thailand), Roland Reber (Germany) and Manoel Oliveira (Portugal).

The top prize at IFFI -- the Golden Peacock for the festival's best film -- is Rs.40 lakh along with a golden peacock statuette.