Award-winning films, premieres mark Dharamsala International film fest

Day one of the 13th edition of the Dharamsala International Film Festival (DIFF) saw Dalai Lama’s sister, Jetsun Pema, as the special guest for the festival’s opening ceremony that featured Payal Kapadia’s ‘All we imagine as light’ and a performance by students of the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) school.

The festival which includes over 80 films being screened in the next four days, began with the screening of Wisdom of Happiness, a documentary featuring the Dalai Lama. The film captures the spiritual leader offering practical advice on navigating modern challenges in the 21st century.

The Malayalam film about three Indian women and how they navigate their lives in Mumbai has been getting accolades and appreciation ever since it was awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes in May. At DIFF, it was screened across four screens which were packed to the rafters.

Attendees queued up for documentaries like ‘Nocturnes’, ‘Cinema Pe Cinema’ and Malayalam film ‘Thadavu’ (The Sentence).

In Nocturnes, by focusing on a small, ephemeral, nocturnal creature like the moth, filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan seek to question a human-centric view of the world. Vani Subramanian’s Cinema Pe Cinema – which got a world premiere at DIFF 2024 – meanders through theatres in small towns and big cities across India, creating a memory scape of women and men whose lives were touched by single screen cinemas. The film received a very warm reception from the predominantly young audience.

The audience winner at International Film Festival of Kerala in 2023, Thadavu (The Sentence) was a highly anticipated film, and the DIFF audience didn’t disappoint director Fazil Razak. With queues snaking round the block at the venue, people had to be turned away from the movie which Razak describes as “capturing human emotions, and not female emotions.”

Abhishek Thakur opined that DIFF had run outreach programmes to bring the magic of cinema to local communities across the Himalayan region. These initiatives according to him include film screenings and discussions in schools and colleges including Gamru village school, Mewoen Tsuglak Petoen Tibetan School and Wood Whistlers School, and the Dharamshala District Jail. Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) was founded by filmmakers and artists Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in 2012.