Pondicherry International Film Festival 2018: Inaugural edition to open with Alain Gomis' Félicité

The inaugural edition of Pondicherry International Film Festival (PIFF), which will showcase over 100 films from more than 25 countries, is set to begin from Thursday, 26 September.

The opening night of the festival will be hosted at the French Consulate Puducherry on 25 September with a screening of Alain Gomis’ Félicité, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at Berlinale 2017. Teen Aur Aadha, directed by Daria Gaikalova and presented by Anurag Kashyap, will be the closing film. Adil Hussain and Ekavali Khanna starrer What Will People Say (directed by Iram Haq), which has been declared as the Norwegian official entry into the Oscar 2019 will also be showcased at the film festival.

Other Indian film screenings include Pratim D Gupta’s  Ahare Mon , Indrasis Acharya’s Pupa, Shubhashish Bhutiani’s Mukti Bhawan, Lokesh Rajavel’s My Son is Gay and Jiju Antony’s The Forsaken. Foreign-language films like Jurgen Ureña’s Hold Me Like Before, Adrian Goiginger’s The Best of All Worlds and Jorge Barrio’s Newton’s Third Law will also be screened.

“It is a privilege to be associated with the first edition of PIFF as the representative of the country that has produced stalwarts in cinematography like Etienne-Jules Marey, Louis and August Lumiere, Georges Melies and Alice Guy-Blache here in India, a country that produces maximum number of films in maximum number of languages in an year,” said the French Consul General Catherine Suard.

The festival will be conducted at various venues like Alliance Française de Pondichéry, Multimedia Centre Auditorium, JN Auditorium and Pondicherry University among others.

The 1st Pondicherry Film Festival, 26 - 30 September.
Want to watch @MuktiBhawan, Teen Aur Aadha | @gai_dar, What Will People Say | @iramhaq or The Forsaken | @JijuAntony6?
Book now - https://t.co/ZJiluqwHzA@pondyfilmfest @Pickurflick @_AdilHussain @saibalchatter @UtpalBorpujari pic.twitter.com/ZfbUMlA7tG

— film tribe (@filmtribeIN) September 24, 2018

Streaming platform Pickurflick with the support of Puducherry Tourism has organised the independent film extravaganza.

France is the partner country for the festival and there will be a special focus on French cinema, art and culture. Besides film screenings, the five-day film festival will also conduct art, culture exhibition, food festival and music concerts to celebrate art, entertainment and travel in Puducherry, which was a French colony.

The mega festival will also promote Puducherry as a tourist destination. PIFF 2018 will have a special section on independent Tamil cinema and will also focus on indie regional cinema.

PIFF 2018 will run from 26-30 September.