Eight Indian films including Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox to screen at Dubai Intl. Film Fest

The Dubai International Film Festival is pulling out all stops to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year with great pomp and glory. The festival that went underway from 6 December will go on till the 14th of this month. And as part of the attractions it has dished out are 174 feature documentaries and short films from 57 nations, including 100 films from the Arab world. India is being represented by as many as eight films at the festival this year. These include Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox that has been featured in the Muhr Asia-Africa Competition along with Amit Kumar’s Monsoon Shootout. Along with that there will be three films from our country that will have their world premieres there. They are Shaji Karun’s Swapaanam (The Voiding Soul in Malayalam), Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Bengali film Shesher Kobita (The Last Poem) and Madhureeta Anand’s Kajarya (Hindi). Two good documentaries. Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar’s Katiyabaaz (Powerless) based on a Kanpur power thief and Surabhi Sharma’s Bidesia in Bambai on Mumbai’s Bhojpuri music underbelly are also being featured. Along with a children’s animation feature film titled The Delightful World of Goopi and Bagha by Shilpa Ranade, produced by the Children’s Film Society of India will also be screened. While the opening film of the festival was Omar directed by Hany Abu-Assad that had earlier won a Jury Prize in Cannes‘ Un Certain Regard this year, David O Russell’s American Hustle that stars Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro will be the closing film. Indian stars due to attend the festival include Priyanka Chopra, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddique, Nimrat Kaur, Shekhar Kapur, Rahul Bose, Sanjay Suri, Jaaved Jaffrey and Malayali star Jayaram.