Munich plans India Focus

The Munich Film Festival (June 26-July 4) has an impressive film programme. It had 200 films on 15 screens, including many that had just premiered in Cannes such as Palme d'Or winner Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces and Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay (Best Director, Cannes). There was also Abbas Kiarostami's latest film Shirin, Amir Naderi's formidable Vegas: Based on a True Story, as well as German films Andreas Dresen's Whisky with Vodka and Carolin Otto's documentary The White Raven.

Indian films in the festival included Adoor Gopalakrishnan's minimalist A Climate For Crime (Oru Pennum randa aanum—One woman two men) and Santosh Sivan's moving film Tahaan: A Boy with a Grenade.

There's good news. As Munich Film Festival director Andreas Strohl says, “We have long shown Indian films, thanks to our programmer Klaus Eder. In 2010 we will have a package with an India focus, emphasising aesthetically oriented films rather than Bollywood, with about 20 films and directors." Accordingly, this year, the Goethe Institute is specially arranged for an Indian delegation of 14 members to participate in the festival, with a view to developing the package, as well as to closer ties between the Indian and German film industries, including co-productions. They included directors Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Suman Mukhopadhyay and Jabbar Patel, FTII director Pankaj Rag, scriptwriter Urmi Juvekar and yours truly.

Meenakshi Shedde is India Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival's International Critics' Week, and India advisor to the Venice, Locarno, Toronto and Pusan festivals.