Wildlife to be International Documentary and Short Film Festival theme

Thiruvananthapuram: The ninth four-day International Documentary and Short Film Festival (IDSFFK), which starts on June 10, has “wildlife” as its theme and will screen works by documentary filmmakers Naresh Bedi, Sekhar Dattatri, Sandesh Kadur, Suresh Elamon and Praveen Singh.

There will be 79 films competing in the documentary, short film, animation, music, video, and campus categories in the festival in which more than 120 filmmakers will participate. In all, there are 204 films which will be shown at Kairali, Sree and Nila.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the festival, being organised by Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, at Kairali Theatre. There are eight long documentaries in the competition section including The Sheperdess of the Glaciers, a film which follows a Ladakhi shepherdess for a year and the travails she faced. Fireflies in the Abyss focuses on a Nepali boy born in the coal mines.

The works of Manipuri filmmaker Aribam Syam Sarma will be featured in the retrospective section while the works of Kashmiri filmmaker Sanjay Kak and Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing will be shown in the ‘Filmmaker in Focus’ section.

The festival features German short films which were shown at International Short film Festival Oberhausen. One of the oldest short film festivals, Oberhausen encourages experimental shorts. Short films from Latin American countries and some curated by Marathi filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni will also be showcased at the festival.