Aamir Khan for Melb Film Fest

This year’s Melbourne International Film Fest will have a very special attraction for Indian film fans. Actor Aamir Khan will walk the red carpet and introduce his latest film Peepli Live.

Described in promotions as “India’s answer to Johnny Depp”, Aamir Khan will be accompanied by director Anusha Rizvi and some members of the cast at a gala screening of the film on August 6, 7.30 pm at the Regent Theatre. The event is copresented by Melbourne film company Mind Blowing Films.

Aamir’s film is only one among a set of Indian films to be screened at the festival this year.

As such, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), has done what the Sydney Film Festival has stayed away from for so long: showcase an industry that produces the largest number of films a year. As well, the move will attract a good number of Melbourne’s large Indian community, who would definitely have stayed away otherwise. Indeed, many Indian fans from other cities will probably land up at the Festival just because Aamir Khan is going to be there!

For Mitu Bhowmick Lange of Mind Blowing Films, who is also the distributor of the film in Australia, it was not hard to convince Aamir to come down for the festival.

“We’re all keen to do what’s best for the film, so Aamir readily agreed to do the red carpet event,” she told Indian Link. “It’s really a wonderful, heart-warming film, very hard not to love, and so we’re all doing everything we can to get more and more people to see it. I had already been working with the Melb film festival organizers on the India segment, and I believe the Festival will get us a wider audience for the film”.

The diminutive superstar, Mitu revealed, will be in Melbourne only for a day.

The country focus for this year’s MIFF, beginning July 22, is India. The festival has formed the special category Not Quite Bollywood that will offer a selection of Indian cinema that rejects the glitz and glam of traditional Bollywood fare.

“As the title suggests, the films we have selected for our focus on India are selected from outside of the Bollywood mainstream - they portray an India rarely seen on the screen. The emergence of these new shoots in the Indian film industry is like breaths of fresh air,” said Executive Director Richard Moore.

The films to be screened besides Peepli Live, including LSD, Ishqiya, The Japanese Wife and The Well, all lie outside the mainstream of Bollywood and bring to the audience a new perspective on India.

Peepli Live stars Omkar Das Manikpuri, Raghubir Yadav, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Naseeruddin Shah and Malaika Shenoy in the main roles. The film is produced by the banner of Aamir Khan Productions and opens in theatres on August 13.

Helmed and written by Anusha Rizvi in her first directorial venture, the film is a satire on the farmers’ suicides and subsequent media and political response in the country. The story revolves around poverty-stricken farmers Natha and Budhia, who, burdened with an unpaid loan, risk losing everything. Desperate to keep the roof over his family’s heads, Natha hatches a plan to commit suicide – thereby ensuring the intervention of a government program that helps out the families of deceased. But once a reporter latches onto the story, Natha unwillingly becomes the centre of a frenzied media maelstrom.

A biting social satire that lampoons both government and media in one fell swoop, Peepli Live puts a comedic spin on one of the darkest issues facing India today.

LSD, one of the first all-digital films to break through to mainstream Indian cinema, sees filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee present a salacious mix of sex, lies and videotape that subtly underscores the unseen surveillance we live with day to day. Dibakar Banerjee and Priya Sreedharan will also be guests of the festival.

Set in the Indian countryside, Ishqiya features standout performances from leads Naseeruddin Shah Arshad Warsi and Vidya Balan, along with a laundry-list of villainous pursuers. Closer to Hollywood than Bollywood, Ishqiya is a light-hearted comedy mixed with fast-paced action. This is director Abhishek Chaubey’s debut feature film and he will be in attendance to present his film on August 1.

The Japanese Wife, a critically-acclaimed and touching tale of blind love and eternal hope from filmmaker Aparna Sen. Introverted school teacher Snehamoy (played by actor and rugby star Rahul Bose) finds companionship in the letters of a woman he’s never met. For Miyage, the Japanese woman writing to Snehamoy, their correspondence becomes a long-distance love affair. But when a lonely widower takes refuge in Snehamoy’s home, will solace and circumstance win over a love built on words?

At its core a meditation on how children deal with grief and loss, The Well is filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni’s (The Wild Bull) take on adolescence. Kulkarni’s film is part of a new wave of Marathi cinema – the oldest film industry in India, which focuses on bold realism. After years apart, cousins Sameer and Nachiket meet at a family wedding. Spending their days swimming at the local well and figuring out what to do with their lives, they are inseparable – but when an argument divides them and one goes missing, things are changed forever.

The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is an iconic Melbourne event, with a feast of cinematic delicacies from over 50 countries for 17 days each winter, heavily garnished with a range of parties and special events that cast a celebratory mood over the city. The Festival enjoys annual admissions of more than 190,000, making it one of Melbourne’s significant public events.

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