A still from Arabian Nights
The forthcoming Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 29-November 5) perfectly reflects the so-called Make in India moment – its line-up is spilling over with Indian films, documentaries and restored classics. Meanwhile, followers of world cinema can choose from among an international competition section that showcases new and interesting titles as well as prize winners from the leading festivals in the world. The world cinema programming is headed by Anu Rangachar, while the After Dark and experimental sections have their own curators.
There will be healthy crowds for Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, Hong Sang-soo’s RightNow, Wrong Then, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan, but there is much, much more to choose from among the new titles outside of the international competition section.
Arabian Nights: It runs into three parts, clocks 381 minutes, and is the kind of epic adventure that can only be watched and absorbed at a film festival. Portuguese director Miguel Gomes has used the story-within-a-story structure from One Thousand and One Nights to discuss the impact that Portugal’s financial crisis is having on its citizenry.
Francofonia: Russian master Alexander Sokurov’s docu-fiction is an examination of the Louvre museum during World War II and the relationship between its director and the Nazi occupiers.
The Lobster: Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth (2009) is one of the most powerful dysfunctional family dramas out there. In the English-language The Lobster, featuring Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux and Ben Wishaw, single men and women living in a distant future must find a partner within 45 days, or else they will be turned into animals.
The Club: Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain has notched up a respectable fan following with Tony Manero, Gloria and No. In his new movie, four priests seclude themselves to atone for their past sins (including paedophilia) but find that they cannot escape the consequences of their actions.
Chronic: Michel Franco’s movie picked up the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival. Tim Roth plays a male hospice nurse whose involvement with terminally ill patients comes with psychological side-effects.
Body: Another meditation on the human body, this time from Poland. Malgorzata Szumowska’s black comedy explores eating disorders and bodily self-harm through the tale of a public prosecutor and his teenage daughter.
Dog Lady: Described as a largely dialogue-free film with a strong central performance, Dog Lady features a nameless woman who haunts the outskirts of Buenos Aires with a pack of stray dogs for company.
Manto: Sarmad Khoosat directs and stars as Saadat Hasan Manto, the Urdu author and screenplay writer who migrated to Pakistan after the Partition. The movie is an account of his post-1947 experiences.
Aferim!: Romania overtook Iran as the country to watch out on the festival circuit some years ago. This latest offering from ex- Ceausescu land is a Berlin International Film Festival winning period drama set in the nineteenth century and involving the hunt for a Roma slave.
Tangerine: Made with three iPhone 5S smartphones, Sean Baker’s study of trans-sexual prostitutes in Hollywood has attracted praise for its piercing study of friendship and sexuality.
From Afar: The Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival is from Venezuela, a country that doesn’t throw up too many titles. It is the tale of an elderly man who pays for the non-sexual company of younger men.
The Idol: Hany Abu Assad, director of the estimable Paradise Now, is back with an adaptation of the real-life experiences of Mohammad Assaf, the Gaza resident who won the Arab Idol singing contest in 2013.
The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers: It deserves to be watched for the title alone, but also because its helmer, Ben Rivers, is an renowned experimental British director. Rivers explores the nightmares faced by a filmmaker who abandons his latest project.
Sunset Song: Terrence Davies, another British national treasure who has made beguiling films and documentaries drawn from episodes in his life, returns with a feature on a farming family in northern Scotland.
Atlantic: A review in the trade journal Variety describes this best: “Beautifully shot on the Moroccan coast, the film tells of a local windsurfer whose frequent association with Euro travellers adds a highly charged pull to the already palpable draw of departure."
Tag (Riaru Onikoggo): Showing in the “After Dark” section dedicated to horror and thriller genre outings, this film from cult Japanese director Shion Sono sees schoolgirls being possessed by ghosts.
In the Shadow of Women: Extra-marital affairs lead to a battle of the sexes in celebrated French director Philippe Garrel’s latest excavation of human folly.
Belladonna of Sadness: The only non-Indian movie in the restored classics section, this one is a true left-of-field selection. Comprising mainly still paintings, Eiichi Yamamoto’s celebrated 1973 movie is the saga of a woman who is raped and oppressed as a witch.
Sangue Del Mio Sangue (Blood of My Blood): Understated Italian master Marco Bellocchio, whose Dormant Beauty was shown at festivals in India in 2012, returns with a seventeenth-century tale of a cursed monastery.
Blue: The section on experimental cinema includes Blue by avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died in 1993. Blue is the never-before-seen-in-India director’s final film. Over an unchanging blue screen, voiceovers by Jarman, who was partially blind at the time of his death, and his frequent collaborators, including Tilda Swinton, revisit the filmmaker’s life and work.
Vagabond: Through 47 episodes and multiple perspectives, Mona, a drifter who has died, is resurrected and deconstructed. This 1985 film by French New Wave director Agnes Varda is among three films that will pay tribute to her – the other titles are her breakthrough Cleo From 5 to 7 and her documentary The Gleaners and I.