MAMI 2023: Top Ten Discoveries At The Festival
NDTV
The Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023 includes two established directors, Asif Kapadia and Mostafa Sarwar Farooki, along with debutants
The recent Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023 programme was packed with exciting debuts that announced the advent of directorial talents to watch. This top ten list isn't, however, limited to first-time filmmakers alone. It includes two established directors - Asif Kapadia and Mostafa Sarwar Farooki. The former is represented by a film that, in terms of style and substance, if not in spirit, is a marked departure from his previous work; the latter by a personal drama that introduces him as an actor. These are our ten favourite "discoveries" at the 2023 Mumbai Film Festival:
And, Towards Happy Alleys
Debutante Sreemoyee Singh's And, Towards Happy Alleys stood out in a line-up of fabulous documentaries at the 2023 MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. Equal parts lament and celebration, the 75-minute essay shines a light on the beauty and power of Iranian poetry, cinema and women sought to be hemmed in by a "claustrophobic totalitarian regime". Piecing together fragments gathered over several years of filming, the Kolkata-based director crafts a delectably lucid, phenomenally perceptive portrait of a society grappling with curtailments of free expression, feminine desire and song. The poems of Forough Farrokhzad, the films of Jafar Panahi (and several others) and the courage and creativity of Iranian women in the face of decades of oppression form the spine of the Berlin-premiered film. Its strength stems from the way it sees and recognises light in - and at the end of - a tunnel of darkness.
The Dreamer