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Journalism of Courage
The 16th edition of the Habitat Film Festival (HFF) will begin on May 3 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, and conclude on May 12. With a curation of nearly 40 feature films, 10 documentaries, and three short film packages, the festival will also organise retrospectives, workshops, filmmaking master classes, panel and film book discussions. This year, the premieres will showcase a diverse perspective from both veterans and first-time directors.
The festival will open on May 3 with Jayant Somalkar’s Marathi-language film Sthal (A Match) (2023), which won the NETPAC Award at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. The film presents an uncompromising tale of Indian matchmaking. It will be followed by the 9 p.m. premiere of Atul Sabharwal’s spy drama, Berlin (2023) featuring Ishwak Singh and Aparshakti Khurana in leading roles. The Hindi-language drama premiered in India at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2023. This is Sabharwal’s third feature, his recent work includes the Critics’ Choice Awards nominated screenplay for the web series Jubliee.
The documentary segment will screen 10 stories, starting from May 4. They will be screened every festival day at 11 am in the Stein Auditorium, IHC, starting with the Sundance-winning film, Against the Tide (2023) directed by Sarvnik Kaur, which follows the journey of two fishers and friends from Mumbai’s Koli community pursuing their livelihoods by different means. Sreemoyee Singh’s heartwarming Berlinale premiere, And, Towards Happy Alleys (2023) offers a poetic storytelling of love for the cinema of Iran through the lens of the uncompromising daily struggle of Iranian women.
The festival’s retrospective segment presents selected works of the influential filmmaker Kumar Shahani, whose recent passing away has left a void in the film world. The section brings together three of his noted works: Char Adhyay (1997), Kasba (1991) and Maya Darpan (1972), his debut feature. Shahani’s scriptwriter on Char Adhyay, poet Udayan Vajpeyi, will introduce the film at the retrospective’s opening on May 4. His subordinates Mita Vashisht and Roshan Shahani will introduce Kasba and Maya Darpan, in the following days.
The supplementary programmes at HFF feature a one-day screenwriting workshop led by Ashwini Malik, senior mentor of screenwriting from Whistling Woods International, Mumbai. Another one-day workshop will focus on various facets of film pitching and festival strategies for independent films. This session will be guided by producers and industry insiders, including Bauddhayan Mukherji, Sanjay Gulati, Rahul Merchant and Aseem Chhabra. An exhibition, showcasing Hindi film posters and memorabilia from the blockbuster decade of the 1970s, in collaboration with the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), will be held simultaneously.
Several directors will be present for post-screening discussions. The schedule of the festival can be viewed at: www.habitatworld.com/hff2024/listing.php.
