Fourteen films from across the country have been selected for the India Story section of the upcoming Mumbai Film Festival. The line-up for this non-competition section was announced by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images on Monday. The 20th edition of the festival will be held from October 25 to November 1.

The slate includes Ajji director Devashish Makhija’s Bhonsle, starring Manoj Bajpayee as a Maharashtrian police officer who retires from the force, Rajat Kapoor’s dark comedy Kadakh and Sangeeta Datta’s Rituparno Ghosh documentary Bird Of Dusk.

Joining the line-up are Anamika Haksar’s Old Delhi-set film Taking The Horse To Eat Jalebis, Subash Sahoo’s documentary The Sound Man Mangesh Desai, Swati Dandekar’s True Blue and Mansore’s Kannada feature Nathicharami.

Satyanshu Singh and Devanshu Singh’s Chintu ka Birthday, comedy collective AIB’s first feature film production, will also be screened in this section. The film stars Vinay Pathak, Tillotama Shome and Seema Pahwa.

There’s also Unnikrishnan Avala’s Malayalam film Udalazham, about a boy grappling with his sexuality, and Karan Chavan and Vikram Patil’s Imago, about a girl who struggles to come to terms with her identity after she is diagnosed with vitiligo. Other films in the line-up are Anupam Kaushik Borah’s Assamese film Bornodi Bhotiai, Aijaz Khan’s Hamid, Pawan K Shrivastava’s Life Of An Outcast and Vinu Kolichal’s Bilathikuzhal.

Advertisement

Bornodi Bhotiai chronicles the life and traditions of the Majuli people, while Hamid revolves around a Kashmiri boy who attempts to locate his missing father by dialling God. The films stars Talha Arshad Reshi, Rasika Dugal and Vikas Kumar. Life Of An Outcast captures the financial struggle of a Dalit farmer who has to bail his son, a mathematics professor, out of jail.

The line-up for the festival’s India Gold competition section, announced last week, includes Rima Das’s Bulbul Can Sing, Thithi writer Ere Gowda’s directorial debut Balekempa and Kabir Singh Chowdhry’s Mehsampur.