Natkhat And Habaddi To Open Melbourne Indian Film Festival 2020

Two of our films from India, namely Natkhat and Habaddi will be opening the coveted and prestigious Melbourne Indian Film Festival 2020.

This is a very precious and pride filled moment for our Indian film fraternity as two of our films Natkhat and Habaddi to open Melbourne Indian Film Festival 2020.

It’s a very important and glorious moment for our country and more so for our film industry as a whole since two of our Indian films Natkhat and Habaddi to open Melbourne Indian Film Festival 2020.

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Natkhat is a film which has one of most finest and nuanced actress Vidya Balan playing the lead role. Whereas on the other hand, Habaddi is a regional Marathi language film, which has been directed by Nachiket Samant.

Also this is a real fact check that after almost seven months of being locked up and confined in the comfort of our homes due to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic in the entire world which is still in full force and is deeming to be unstoppable, the film critics all around the world have now started badly missing their conversations, their joy of assessing the films, their understanding on an individual level with each other, zealousness and excitement of waiting for the verdict and so on.

But this is also truth which all the film fanatics and movie lovers know that the magical spell created on the celluloid screen has an ingredient of brilliant storytelling along with the jaw dropping performances by the actors and such a movie is definitely capable to win the hearts of audiences and netizens as these kind of films are a visual treat to the eyes and are always able to stand out on their own without anyone else over shadowing them.

Luckily for filmy fanatics in this month of October is a very special kind of surprise which was much awaited for by everyone.

The coveted film festival that is Indian Film Festival which takes place in the picturesque city of Melbourne every year in the month of August and which got delayed this year for the first time since past 10 years of its inception due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will be going virtual this year 2020.

Even though the festival director Mitu Bhowmick Lange had originally wanted to not go digital and virtual but keeping in mind the COVID 19 pandemic situation, The film festival will now be hosted and conducted virtually between 23rd and 30th October 2020.

The famous and most popular sections of the festival which are Hurrah Bollywood, Beyond Bollywood, Film India World, Documentaries and Shorts are anticipated to be on the said time schedule.

But especially in this year of 2020 the festival’s short film competition section made huge number of entries.

This is directly above their new section IFFM Film Club that kicked off in June 2020 this year which has had the pleasure and opportunity to host and interact in a panel discussion with some of the best and acclaimed film makers that are Shoojit Sircar, Anurag Kashyap, Aparna Sen, and Vidya Balan. Besides, certainly the festival will be doing their short film competition which is to be done in a virtual way instead of the usual. Plan for conducting the eagerly anticipated awards gala night event is being revised so that it can be fitted easily into the rules that are to be followed in the post pandemic situation.

In an officially released statement the festival director Mitu Bhowmick Lange said, “It’s an unusual time that the world is going through and now more than ever before, cinema has been people’s support system and respite through fairly dark times. IFFM stands strong in its spirit to entertain movie buffs across the world and hope that we heal a little together.”

Most important highlight of the festival is going to be its collaboration and tie up with the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) which is because the entire world in this lockdown fought with the issue of mental health problems very bravely and with confidence due to which there is a growing importance of Mental Health awareness in all over the world.

The festival will be opened with Vidya Balan’s film Natkhat which is her official debut as a film producer where it tells a delicately weaved story about a mother who teaches her son all about gender equality and also calls out the toxic misogyny.

The second film for the festival’s opening is the Marathi film Habaddi which tells us the story of a young boy who has a problem of speaking since he stutters a lot.