The first ever Diorama International Film Festival begins next week in New Delhi. The festival announced the films, from 14 countries, which will be competing against each other in the international diorama.
The foreign films will be judged by jury led by Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui, whose films contributed to the Iranian New Wave movement in the 1970s. Polish filmmaker Rafael Kapelinski, whose debut film Butterfly Kisses (2017) won the Crystal Bear at the 2017 Berlinale, film critic and editor of Singaporean publication BigO, Philip Cheah, Italian editor Giogio Franchini and Indian actress Divya Dutta round out the rest of the jury.
The 15 films named in the international competition arrive from all different continents — Asia, Africa and Europe. The Tunisian film, A Part Of Me (2018), co-directed by Silvana Santamaria and Bilal Athimi, examines what happens when someone beloved disappears. The Mexican film, The Weak Ones (2017), directed by Raul Rico follows a farmer who goes to find the gang of kids who killed his dogs.
Sebastian Brauneis’s thriller Sorcerer (2018) from Austria connects together several chilling stories together in devastating results. Taiwan’s entry The Very Last Day (2019), written and directed Cédric Jouarie, reminds one of Stephen King’s Misery, as a best-selling writer is kidnapped by an admirer. However, the admirer is keen to elicit a confession out of the author for something out of her past.
Chouikh Yasmine’s Until The End of Time (2017) from Algeria was the country’s official entry to the Academy Awards last year. Likewise the Afghani film by Jamshid Mehmoudi, Rona, Azim’s Mother (2018) was also the country’s official entry for the foreign film category. .
Miguel Ángel Mengó’s drama Snapshots (2018) is one of two films from Spain, filmmaker Jorge Barrio’s Newton’s Third Law (2017), his first feature length film, will also be screening at the festival.
The makers of Red Flower and Green Leaves (2018), Liu Mimiao and Hu Weijie, have set their film in China’s northwestern region where Chinese Muslims live. The film’s characters uncover some secrets from their past.
Fawzi Saleh’s first film, Poisonous Roses (2018), from Egypt, follows the decaying relationship between a brother and sister in a poor neighbourhood of Cairo.
Stare Yildirim’s My Name Is Batlir Not Butler (2018), about a young Turkish man with a larger than usual head has problems fitting into society. Meanwhile, Sergey Zadorin’s Mad Racing Quest (2018) is an action-charged film find the citizens of a Russian city all involved in a complex but sinister racing game, in which their lives are on the line.
Jacek Raginis-Królikiewicz’s Inspection (2018) looks at the last months of Polish officers held in Soviet camps, right before the Katyn massacre in 1940. André Morais’s Portuguese film from Brazil Blessed Is The Fruit (2018) is also screening the 17th Pune Film Festival this week.
Finally, Olga Korotko’s Bad Bad Winter (2018) from Kazakhstan finds a grieving granddaughter, recently returned to her hometown, who has a less than pleasant reunion with her former classmates.
The inaugural festival will be held from 14 to 20 January at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi.