Amit Masurkar’s foreign language Oscar submission Newton, Rima Das’ award-winning Village Rockstars and Malayalam movies Randu Per (Two persons) by Prem Shankar and Sanju Surendran’s Aedan: Garden of Desire will compete against titles from across the world in the International Film Festival of Kerala. In all, 14 movies have been selected for the International Competition section of the prestigious festival, which will be held in Thiruvananthapuram from December 8 to December 15.

The acclaimed event was recently criticised when it failed to include Kumar Sasidharan’s Sexy Durga in its competition category, listing it only for the Malayalam Cinema Today section. Sasisdharan withdrew his movie in September, accusing the organisers of ignoring independent Indian productions. This prompted the Kazhcha Film Forum, a film society from Thiruvnanthapuram, to announce a rival event that would coincide with the state-sponsored festival to protest its selection process. The Kazcha Indie Film Festival will run from December 8 to December 11.

The Malayalam Cinema Today section of IFFK , which highlights promising local productions, will include Mahesh Narayan’s Take Off, Dileesh Pothan’s Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, Salim Kumar’s Karutha Joothan, Prasanth Vijay’s Athisayangalude Venal and Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Angamaly Diaries.

Play
Angamaly Diaries (2017).

The festival will honour Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov with the Lifetime Achievement Award for the year. Sokurov’s credits include Taurus (2001), the experimental one-take period film Russian Ark (2002), Faust (2011) and the documentary Francofonia (2015).

A retrospective section will screen six of Sokurov’s films, along with the works of Filipino fimmaker Lino Brocka and Malayalam director KP Kumaran. The homage section will screen the movies of recently deceased filmmakers and actors such as Kundan Shah, KR Mohanan, IV Sasi and Om Puri.

Bengali acting legend Madhabi Mukherjee will be the chief guest at the opening ceremony.