Mami Mia

The second big surprise of the evening came from the French movie,My Little Princess. The movie beat the pre-festival hype over The Sleeping Beauty and rumours over Generation P to win the Best Film award in the competition section. This made its director Eva Ionesco richer by US$ 100,000. It also bagged the Best Actress Award for Isabelle Huppert and Anamaria Vartolomei.

Glamour and glitches

Unlike previous years,the beach-side venue for the closing ceremony attracted more number of celebrities this year,even though big names were missing. Veteran filmmaker Gulzar added to the charm of the evening with his poetry,as he collected the Indian Lifetime Achievement Award. It was also nice to see actor Sarika and director Kiran Rao,who were part of the international competition and Dimensions Mumbai jury,pose together for the shutterbugs. Actors Gul Panag,Rajeev Khandelwal and directors Vikramaditya Motwane,Onir,Basu Chatterjee,Vishal Bharadwaj,Yash Chopra,Ramesh Sippy and Manoj Kumar,were present to give away the awards.

The joy of seeing these film personalities was marred by numerous glitches through the evening. When Rao went up the dais to read the jury report for the Dimensions Mumbai,there was no report available. The mismatch of AVs became a never-ending saga. However,what takes the cake is Jackky Bhagnani’s confession. When called on stage to present an award,the enthusiastic young actor almost grabbed the mic to say,“I am making a fool of myself,but I must admit that I kept wondering who is ‘Mami’. Now,I know.”

Crowd-puller

The real winner at the festival this year was the movie selection.

Serpentine queues of film-lovers were a common feature before the screening of most movies. When they got tired of standing,they made themselves comfortable on the floor,playing dumb charades or simply discussing movies,till the auditorium doors opened. With the main festival venue Cinemax,Versova,being close to the neighbourhoods populated by the film and television personalities,many popular faces were spotted in these queues. The biggest crowd-pullers of the 200 films shown were George Clooney’s The Ides of March,Wim Wenders’ Pina,Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and Martin Scorcese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World. All of them had repeat shows,beyond the regular festival schedule to cheer up those who couldn’t make it for the earlier one.

Gay spirit

For the first time,the festival hosted a panel discussion on a topic related to homosexuality. On Monday,there was a panel discussion on the portrayal of gay and lesbianism in Indian cinema featuring Tarun Mansukhani,Aseem Chabbra,Onir,Rajit Kapoor,Sridhar Rangayan and Rajeev Masand. Director of Dostana Tarun Mansukhani said “There is homophobia in our country. If John (Abraham) and Abhishek (Bachchan) were really gay,they would not have played the characters nor would have anyone bought the film”. Onir,whose movies My Brother Nikhil and I Am deal with homosexuality,quipped,“I don’t get producers easily; they always tell me a ‘no’.” What the panellists and audience unanimously agreed upon was the need to deal with the topic with a lot of sensitivity.