Kerala film festival adjusts to new normal but strikes a cigar & a dissenting note
Thiruvananthapuram, Feb. 10: The 25th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) opened on Wednesday all masked up, with strict adherence to social distancing and to a note of warning.
The IFFK, whose fumigated and sanitised auditoriums are running at just 50 per cent capacity and all delegates have to undergo rigorous antigen tests — 70 out of 800 tested on Tuesday turned out to be “positive” and are in quarantine — has adjusted well to the Coronavirus-induced new normal, but it continues to strike a note of dissent through the films it picks.
The festival’s opening film, Bosnia’s Oscar entry Quo Vadis, Aida?, which had its India premiere on Wednesday evening after chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated the film festival, is a cautionary tale about “what happens when we fail to react on time to warning signs”. Directed by Jasmila bani, Quo Vadis, Aida? is based on recorded facts and recalls in shocking detail the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995.
After the traditional inauguration with the lighting of the lamp, legendary French filmmaker Jean Luc Godard received the Lifetime Achievement award. Greeting the audience from his home through videoconferencing, Godard said, “I am sorry for speaking in the tongue of the dominators (English). Thank you very much Kerala. Thank you to the Kerala festival for screening good and sensible films. It is great that five of my films are being screened there,” and in his quintessential style, lit a cigar.
Quo Vadis, Aida? (Where are you going, Aida?) leads a long list of foreign and Indian films at IFFK that have dissent as their central theme. This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection, which is part of the festival’s International Competition section, tells the story of an 80-year-old widow in Lesotho who is making arrangements to die when the forced resettlement of her village brings her to the forefront of a movement to stand for land rights.
Another “subversive” film in the International competition this year is There Is No Evil by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof. It tells the story of a nation that enforces the death penalty through four men whose destinies are loosely connected by their willingness or refusal to assist in stateordered assassinations. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year and a month later Iranian authorities sentenced Rasoulof, who lives in Germany, to jail on the charge that his films were “propaganda against the system”.
The IFFK is held in Thiruvananthapuram every year. But this year, to avoid crowding, the festival is being held in four locations. It is scheduled to run between February 10 and 14 in Thiruvananthapuram, and after that all films will travel to Ernakulam (from February 17-21), Thalassery (February 2327) and Palakkad (March 1-5).