Marathi cinema tops the official selection for 45th International Film Festival of India

2014 has turned out to be a great year for Marathi Cinema. With blockbusters such as Timepass, Lai Bhaari and Duniyadaari having collected huge moolah as well as rave reviews from hard-to-please critics, now Essel Vision's Elizabeth Ekadashi  has been selected as the opening film at the 45th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa.

4 films of the same production house; Elizabeth Ekadashi, Dr. Prakash Baba Amte, Killa, Lokmanya Ek Yugpurush will mark their presence at IFFI as official selections for the Indian Panorama section. After bagging prestigious awards at the much coveted Mumbai Film Festival, the movie Killa enters the festival circuit yet again with IFFI. The directors of these 4 films respectively, Paresh Mokashi, Samrouddhi Porey, Om Raut & Avinash Arun are overjoyed at this unprecedented achievement.  

Other Marathi films to be selected for the festival include Ek Hazarachi Note by Shrihari  Sathe and Yellow by Mahesh Limaye as feature films and A Rainy Day by Rajendra Talak, Mitraa by Ravi Jadhav, Vithya by  Prasanna Shrikant Ponde and Ek Hota Kau by Viju Gopal Mane under the non-feature section. 

Last year, Essel’s film Fandry directed by Nagraj Manjule too made its presence felt at all major national & international film festivals and won coveted awards such as – Grand Jury Prize & Special Mention at MAMI, 5 Awards at PIFF and 2 National Awards. 

A total of 10 Marathi Films with 7 feature Films and 3 Non Feature films, 8  Malayalam films with 7 Feature films and 1 Non Feature film, 5 Bengali films,2 Assamese films  along with one Tamil film, one Kannada film and 1 Oriya film have been selected in the Indian Panorama section of the festival.