Winning films

will be screened in Goa

Duration: 8 minutes

Registration from A’bad

72

Total

registration

640

With 24 hours to go before the competition takes off dna finds out what’s cooking at India’s Film Project

Vrunda R Bhatt

Travel back to 2011, and there were only 86 teams at India’s Film Project (IFP), with most of them from Ahmedabad. Come 2015, the scene is totally different. More than 650 teams from India and abroad have registered at the event. But the highest number of regional entries are from South India with 207 teams from the region making up almost 35% of competing teams.

“We only had a month to prepare back then. However, this year, we started brainstorming much in advance - say by February,” said Ritam Bhatnagar, director at IFP, while speaking about the event.

In a break from e-age trends, direct promotion in cities, rather than relying entirely on digital media for promotion has worked for the event this time. Attending constant calls on helpline numbers seem to have frazzled Bhatnagar’s nerves, and the dark circles under his eyes provide ample proof.

It was tough to decide on the jury

Unlike every year, when jury members are decided quite early, this year, Bhatnagar and team had a tough time in finalising the jury. The final jury includes director Ketan Mehta, film critique Raja Sen, producer Guneet Monga, and Onir of ‘My Brother Nikhil’ fame.

This year’s theme still secret

From ‘small things in life’, ‘ingredients of good living’, ‘India can change’ to last year’s ‘progress’, IFP has seen varied themes over time. This year too, the theme will be given at the last hour, on this Friday, and the contestants will have just 50 hours to make a film. “I haven’t disclosed the theme even to my team members. But the least I can say is this year the theme will be very neutral,” said Bhatnagar.