South Indian films shine as Dharamsala International Film Fest ends

The Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) completed a successful 13th edition here on Sunday. The final day of the festival showcased the best of South Asian cinema and filmmakers like acclaimed Indian director Rima Das’ Village Rockstars 2 opening the day and Nepalese director Deepak Rauniyar’s Pooja, Sir culminating the festival.

Village Rockstars 2, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, is a highly anticipated follow-up to 2017 festival darling. The audiences at the DIFF appreciated Rima’s trademark storytelling style. The Assamese filmmaker was also part of a panel titled —Shadows of our forgotten ancestors: Reclaiming identity through film — featuring filmmakers like Pranami Koch, Jhansy Giting Dokgre Marak and Tenzin Tsetan Choklay to look at how filmmakers use the act of storytelling to bridge the gaps between cultural memory, marginalisation and the dislocation of personal heritage.

Another highlight of the final day was the Bhutanese-Hungarian production Agent of Happiness, a quiet, gently absorbing documentary that follows two happiness agents as they visit door-to-door, like census workers, collecting data for the government’s happiness survey.

Unable to accommodate scores of people, who missed the morning screening, the festival announced a repeat screening of the movie in the evening. Hemraj Bairwa, Deputy Commissioner, Kangra, also attended the screening of Agents of Happiness.

Yacoob and Felizitas present on the concluding day deliberations told The Tribune, “We are thankful to Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam for the DIFF. The diversity of films chosen was excellent. We are glad to see that the popularity the DIFF is increasing every year. Likeminded people from Indian and all around the world are coming together at the festival.”

Actress Shahana Goswami shared valuable insights for inspiring actors and film enthusiasts in a freewheeling chat with DIFF’s director of programming Bina Paul. The Santosh actor interacted with the audience and answered questions that came her way.

The feature debut from Kinshuk Surjan, Marching in the Dark, focuses on how the growing number of suicides among farmers in India affects their widows. The film received an elated response from the audience. Shuchi Talati’s sensitively crafted coming-of-age drama Girls Will Be Girls won an audience prize at Sundance earlier this year and at the DIFF the response was no less with many proclaiming it to be the best film they saw at the festival.

Rauniyar is yet another exciting voice of Nepalese cinemas alongside Min Bahadur Sham whose film Shambala was also screened at the DIFF. His film Pooja, Sir is a socially-rooted police procedural, a race-against-time thriller, that offers a portrait of Nepal as a complex society on the edge of a new future. The film that stars Rauniyar’s partner and actress Asha Magrati – also a co-writer on the film – beat cancer while filming the movie. The screening of the gripping film was perhaps a fitting end to the 13th edition of the DIFF that highlighted films on social issues and women filmmakers from India and around the world.