Young film lovers beat pandemic blues and turned up in good numbers to watch their favourite movies on screen as the curtains on the Kochi edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) went up here on Wednesday.
A major chunk of the film buffs that turned up at the six venues comprised students from various higher educational institutions, film schools and those representing film societies. Some of the inaugural day movies that won the hearts of the youth included Adhilkhan Yerzhanov’s Yellow Cat; Bahman Tavoosi’s The Names of the Flowers; Mohammed Rasoulof’s There is no Evil; Dear Comrades by Andrei Konchalovsky to name a few. Among the Malayalam Cinema Today category, Senna Hegde’s Thinkalazcha Nischayam and Shambhu Purushothaman’s Papam Cheyathavar Kallariyette earned critical appreciation from the viewers.
Acclaimed film-maker K.G. George along with 24 artistes and technicians representing the new face of Malayalam film industry lit 25 lamps to mark the silver jubilee of the fest at Saritha-Savitha threatre complex in the evening.
The Bosnian film Quo Vadis, Aida?, which has been shortlisted for the 93rd Academy Awards, was the opening film.
Churuli, the much anticipated Malayalam movie directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery after his globally acclaimed work Jellikettu, will cap the second day of the fest on Thursday. The reservation for the movie ran out in no time after it opened at 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Churuli is being screened under the International Competition category.
Mohit Priyadarshi’s Kosa, which portrays the agony of a teenager who is picked up by the police mistaking him for a Maoist leader by the same name, will be another highlight in this category.
Other movies to be screened on the second day of the fest include Bilesuvar, a 2020 Azerbaijan movie directed by Elvin Adigozel which strings together five hardly connected stories taking place at Bilesuvar, a district south of Azerbaijan and Vietnamese movie Rom directed by Tran Thanh Huy that narrates the tale of an orphaned child whose troubles manifold as luck start smiling on him when he starts running numbers of the State-run lottery.