Jio MAMI 21st Mumbai Film Festival 2019: Six films by Netflix to be screened, from The Irishman to Marriage Story

Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) announced on Monday it will screen six international titles at the festival this year in October. Five films and one documentary will be part of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2019 line up, including The Two Popes , The Irishman , Atlantics, I Lost My Body , Marriage Story , and Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator. Fernando Meirelles, the director for The Two Popes, will present the film at the festival in addition to conducting a masterclass. Mumbai will be the first stop in Asia Meirelles (director of City of God 2002, which won a TIFF Visions Award, and was nominated for an Oscar, Blindness 2008, and 360 2011) will make for The Two Popes. MAMI is slated to take place in Mumbai from 17 to 24 October. Speaking of its association with Netflix, Smriti Kiran, Artistic Director, MAMI said in a statement, “Netflix is known for stories that transcend boundaries of geography and language, giving creators unparalleled artistic freedom and talent a global platform to showcase their dexterity with the craft. We, at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star, are thrilled to showcase some of Netflix’s finest stories at this edition of the festival.” “Having Fernando Meirelles at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star to talk about his work is exciting and inspiring for the entire film and entertainment community. Services such as Netflix enable stories from around the globe to reach and be consumed by audiences everywhere. We are excited to explore the wonderful worlds that special Netflix titles will bring us at the festival this year,” said Anupama Chopra, Festival Director, MAMI, in a statement. Check out the Netflix films to be screened at Jio MAMI 21st Mumbai Film Festival Atlantics Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned. Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator This documentary examines the dramatic rise and fall of the controversial founder of hot yoga, Bikram Choudhury. Arriving in Beverly Hills from Kolkata, India in the early 1970s, Choudhury quickly cultivated a celebrity following, and built a global fitness empire that furnished him with extreme wealth. But by the 2010s, as numerous sexual abuse allegations emerged and stories of his aggressive, cult-like training environment surfaced, the lawsuits started to mount, and Choudhury’s unorthodox teaching style became front-page news. Directed by Academy Award winner Eva Orner (Taxi to the Dark Side, Chasing Asylum) and produced by Sarah Anthony (The Price of Free, The Defiant Ones), the Netflix original documentary shines a light on the stories of the women who took him down, and explores the contradiction of how this healing discipline could simultaneously help and hurt so many. **I Lost My Body** In a Parisian laboratory, a severed hand escapes its unhappy fate and sets out to reconnect with its body in this Cannes Critics’ Week selection. During a hair-raising escapade across the city, the extremity fends off pigeons and rats alike to reunite with pizza boy Naoufel. Its memories of Naoufel and his love for librarian Gabrielle may provide answers about what caused the hand’s separation, and a poetic backdrop for a possible reunion between the three. Based on the novel Happy Hand by Academy Award nominee Guillaume Laurant (AMELIE). Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story Marriage Story is Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate portrait of a marriage breaking up and a family staying together. The film stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta co-star. Martin Scorsese’s  The Irishman Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci star in Martin Scorsese’s mafia film, an epic saga of organized crime in post-war America, told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran, a hustler and hitman, who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century. Spanning decades, the film chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, the disappearance of legendary union boss Jimmy Hoffa, and offers a monumental journey through the hidden corridors of organised crime, its inner workings, rivalries, and connections to mainstream politics. [caption id=“attachment_7408151” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] A still from The Irishman trailer. Twitter[/caption] **The Two Popes**   From Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of City of God, and three-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, comes an intimate story of one of the most dramatic transitions of power in the last 2,000 years. Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins). Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and the future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church. Behind Vatican walls, a struggle commences between both tradition and progress, guilt and forgiveness, as these two very different men confront elements from their pasts in order to find common ground and forge a future for a billion followers around the world.