27 Oct 2023
Early this year, Priyanka Chopra Jonas hosted a pre-Oscars bash in Hollywood to celebrate South Asian talent both on and behind the screen. A few days later, Indian films RRR (2022) and The Elephant Whisperers (2022) won at the Oscars. South Asia will be the focus again this time at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 27 to November 5), of which Chopra is the chairperson. Returning after a pandemic-induced intermission of three years, the festival will host 130 filmmakers and screen 250 films across 20 venues around Mumbai. One of them is the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre’s 2,000-seater Grand Theatre, where Chopra is expected to host an opening gala.
“We were sure if MAMI is to be back in Mumbai, it has to be in a bigger way and with a newer vision,” says artistic director Deepti DCunha, who has worked with international film festivals as a programmer and has been part of the NFDC’s (National Film Development Corporation) Film Bazaar. Spotlighting South Asian films is a cause dear to DCunha. “Literature, art and academia have been talking about South Asian as an identity for quite some time now. We are just bringing it into cinema,” she says. It means films from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan will be part of an extensive line-up that includes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (2023) and new works by auteurs Aki Kaurismaki and Wim Wenders, to name a few. A few will compete with Indian films for the top prize—a cash award of Rs 25 lakh. Filmmaker Mira Nair will headline the jury. By promoting cinema from these countries that don’t have film industries as robust as India’s, DCunha hopes the festival will empower creators by connecting them with producers, technicians and line producers in a city that is at the heart of filmmaking in India. At least eight first-time filmmakers will be part of a programme that guides them on “how to produce their next film”. A platform will also be given to South Asian filmmakers from the diaspora, some of whom are making films in languages of their new homes such as Basque. As many as 30 Indian languages will be showcased, including Garo, Santali and Konkani.
The festival’s independent spirit is very much alive. As DCunha notes, the idea is to “increase the visibility of an independent film, which would otherwise find it hard to get a regular audience”. It also reflects in the festival sidebar Recap, which provides directors whose films missed out on an on-ground festival in the last three years with a screening. But DCunha notes MAMI’s repute for championing Indian and independent talent doesn’t imply it wants “an artificial divide between independent and mainstream”. “Great content can come in a very big film,” she says. “At the festival, big or small, the love for cinema is the same.”
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