BENGALURU: The star-studded 12th edition of the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) came to a glorious end on Wednesday. Governor of Karnataka, Vajubhai Vala, distributed the prizes among the winners of the various competitions, held for different categories like Kannada, Asian and Indian Cinema, at Vidhana Soudha. With movies being screened at four venues – Orion Mall, Banashankari Second Stage, Chamarajpet and Rajajinagar – movie-lovers were spoilt for choice. 

However, movies like Cinema Donkey (Persian), Parasite (Korean), Les Miserables (French), Sorry We Missed You (English), Pain and Glory (Spanish) emerged as crowd favourites. People began to line up for these movies well in advance, sometimes one-and-half-hour in before the scheduled show. “Les Miserables is going to be screened at 8.20pm but I’ve been in the queue from 7.10pm. I think I can do with some extra stamina,” laughed Manoj Kumar, a visitor.  Each of the eight days of the festival centred around a special theme that celebrated cinema. For example, a day dedicated to the 125 years of evolution in cinema had a talk by Sandalwood veteran HN Narahari Rao.

Another day saw a special dedication to female directors, with Vijaylakshmi Singh, director of Yaanaa (Kannada); Suman Nagarkar, producer of Brahmi (Kannada); and Geetha J, director of Run Kalyani (Malyalam) taking centre stage to discuss ways to empower more female directors. “Sometime we are so busy working by ourselves that we forget to meet other female directors. Film festivals like this helps us bridge that gap,” said Rajni Basumatary, whose critically-acclaimed movie Jwlwi - The Seed was screened at the festival. The festival also saw some well-known directors of independent world cinema like Tymur Yashchenko, director of U311 Cherkasy (Ukraine); Evgeny Rumen, director of Golden Voices (Russia) and Paul Ireland, director of Measure for Measure (Australia). 

The last two days saw maximum crowd, where movie industry big-wigs like Anant Nag, Mahesh Manjarekar, Rishab Shetty and Ananth Mahadevan became  a part of the event. The festival also paid tribute to Nag’s movies. At the event, he spoke about his childhood and journey into cinema. “When I was in Mumbai, I did a lot of theatre but I also loved doing movies. I used to love lot of absurd plays, may be that’s why I consciously chose realistic and subtle acting for myself,” said the veteran actor.