GUWAHATI: The 6th Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival got under way at Pragjyoti ITA Centre here from Wednesday.
Film personalities such as Boman Irani, Shakun Batra, Shanaab Alam, Ronnie Lahiri and many others will take part in the four-day festival.
The schedule includes film screenings, interactive sessions, panel discussions and film quiz among others.
Several films from across India will be screened at the festival.
The opening film of the festival, Spring Thunder, directed by Sriram Dalton observed its India premiere at the festival. Dalton and lead actor of the film Ravi Shah addressed the opening day’s press conference.
Spring Thunder highlights the tussle between development and sustainability, in the context of rural India. The film is set up around the uranium mining region of erstwhile Bihar (now Jharkhand) and Chhattisgarh, and the crime, money, politics and rage associated with it. It showcases over one lakh people from indigenous community who struggle to save their ‘water, land and forest’ (jal, jangal, zameen).
National awardwinning filmmaker, Dalton directed the film with over 200 crew members in three years, during which he went to the region to highlight its issues.
The film is been made in Hindi but encompasses four regional languages of eastern India, including the ancient tribal language Kuduk.
Acclaimed films such as What Will People Say, Devil, Nani Teri Morni, Ralang Road, Rockumentary: Evolution of Indian Rock, Chor (The Bicycle), Endharor Bheta Bhangi…(Breaking the Cocoon), Do Cup Chai, Adi- At The Confluence, The Lost Idea, IYE : The Others will be screened at the festival.
Anupam Kaushik Borah’s Assamese film Bornodi Bhotiai will be the closing film of the festival on December 1.
The film is based on a man from Majuli, the river island, who searches for a cure to his strangely prolonged cold. Four other men are in search of love, pursuing the same woman. The woman probably doesn’t know what to search for.
Majuli too, is searching for a cure to its own ‘cold’ – of flood and erosion caused by the Brahmaputra.