Be prepared to be awed and inspired by this legend of Indian cinema, in town for a mini-retrospective of her directorial work screening this weekend.
Read MorePeace-building, great discoveries, tigers and temple cats among highlights of 2024 Berlinale
With the Competition titles still to be announced, the Berlin Film Festival is already showing some great bridge building colors, as well as panache, good taste and humor. And a film that starts out being about cats, but turns into so much more...
Read MoreMostafa Farooki, Pedro Almodóvar and Bradley Cooper titles announced for upcoming Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival
The festival released its program announcement on Monday, which will feature 250 plus films in more than 70 languages, over 70 countries, 20 screens, 8 venues, a state-of-the-art festival hub (NMACC), and a great number of women directors, with over 70 films. Mira Nair will head the South Asia Competition jury.
Read MoreThe Venice Diaries: Forget what you've heard, this year's festival is all about women's stories!
So you may have read by now that the Venice Film Festival is being singled out for not having enough women filmmakers in their Competition line-up. One publication even went so far to criticize Italian culture as a whole, and they used two non-Italian reporters to write the story of course -- one the token male journalist. Because a single, lone, able woman journalist would not have been able to do the job?
Ever hear that saying "don't talk bad about my mama?"
Anyway, while everyone is up in arms for yet another slight at womanhood, I say, get over it! I'm a woman, I'm Italian and I feel very well represented in Venice -- thank you very much. In fact, I have never seen so many beautiful women's stories, so much truth for our gender and so much care in telling those stories as I see in the various line-ups and sidebars this year at La Biennale del Cinema. But of course, you'd have to look beyond the media-selling headlines, watch deeper, dig in the sidebars too and know in your heart that great cinema was never about gender, rather about quality and vision. Just like it ain't about politics, even when the subject is political.
Read MoreThe Locarno Diaries: 'Ray & Liz'', #Female Pleasure' and 'Likemeback'
The greatest thing about the Locarno Festival is how accessible their venues are and how organic an experience watching great cinema becomes here. As author and filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère pointed out earlier, he is in Locarno on Jury duty, while at other festival you basically know what you can expect, here it's wonderful because the discoveries you make are completely unexpected.
Personally, I find it perfect to get up in the morning and catch the press screening of competition films at 9 a.m. at the Kursaal cinema and return there after lunch for more great things. Also sprinkled around town and culminating in the Piazza Grande screening each night, there are many wonderful films to be discovered. I mean, like Meg Ryan said during our public chat this past Saturday, the "Piazza Grande has 8,000 seats!" Now wrap your head around that.
Read MoreThe Qumra Diaries: Wisdom from the Masters with Tilda Swinton and Gianfranco Rosi
The greatness of Qumra, the annual industry event held by the Doha Film Institute to help connect, inspire and encourage filmmakers, lies in its diversity of activities. From the daily working breakfasts with some of the most well-respected festival directors and programmers, sales agents and producers to the Masterclasses with cinema greats, from its Qumra Talks to the networking sessions held each afternoon just around the corner from my hotel, there is a buzz of activity at any given moment and even a non-filmmaker like me can feel the excitement of great cinema in the making.
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