Osian’s-Cinefan will open with the International Premiere of Raami by Babak Shirinsefat. An Iran-Azerbaijan co-production, Raami is the director’s debut film.
Ten years after the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan a middle-aged Azerbaijani folk composer who has spent ten years in a war refugee camp in Sabirabad, goes looking for his Armenian wife and child. He heads for Iran since his family had been lost during the occupation of Jibrail and had fled to Iran. Based on the Azerbaijani legend of Asli and Karam, Raami deals with man’s relations with nature, war and music.
Raami is a glorious fusion of myth and reality, an effortless telescoping of past and present, a meditation on intolerance, love and memory. Restrained and poetic, it is, in the words of the director, an “experience on the closeness of myths to our present time.”
Babak Shirinsefat has mostly made short films and documentaries in Iranian Azerbaijan (from where he hails) since 1987. He is obsessed with the history, folklore and mythology of his birthplace, Azerbaijan. He made his first short fiction film, Image, in 1987. Since then, his films A Poem Like Life, Julia, Sword in Sheath and Train of Zero O’clock have been shown and awarded at several national and international festivals.

Osian’s-Cinefan is one of the world’s leading film festivals. Established in 1999 and held in New Delhi in July every year, it enjoys an international reputation for the quality of films screened over ten days. It is organised by Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art, India’s pioneering arts institution and auction house established in 2000, to create a merit-oriented and financially independent cultural infrastructure. Osian’s-Cinefan, has consistently received support and encouragement from the Government of the NCT of Delhi.
The 9th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema gets underway in New Delhi on 20 July 2007 with a gala opening ceremony followed by the International Premiere of Babak Shirinsefat’s film, Raami. The Festival will play host to over 300 international and Indian guests and expects an audience turnout of over 60,000.
Over ten days, audiences will be treated to the very best of Asian and Arab cinema. Our selection of 140 films from more than 35 countries reflects the unparalleled diversity and eclecticism of the cinemas of Asia. More than 300 guests – including filmmakers, festival directors, producers, actors, scholars and journalists will attend the festival.
This year, Arab cinema has been fully integrated into the festival. Three competition sections – Asian & Arab Cinema, First Films from Asia, Indian Cinema – will be judged by international juries and cash prizes awarded. FIPRESCI and NETPAC give their own awards as well. The regular sections are Cross-Cultural Encounters, Frescoes (of Asian and Arab films), In-Tolerance and Indian Mosaic for the best of the previous year’s productions.
The Festival, with the tagline ‘Recreating Cinematic Culture’, will have a Focus on Japan with a tribute to Kenji Mizoguchi. A number of contemporary Japanese and samurai films will be screened as well. Accompanying this focus are unique Japanese poster designs of World Cinema. Also on display will be one of the biggest exhibitions from the realm of Magic and Fiction, cinematic artworks from the realm of Horror and Science Fiction, and displays of the legendary divas of World Cinema as well as a gigantic display of fifty great Indian female stars.
The Japan focus will also have a benshi performance – the first of its kind in India - that opens the homage to Kenji Mizoguchi on 21 July 2007. This performance transports the audience to the golden age of cinema when silent films were accompanied by a narrator - the benshi. The festival will screen Mizoguchi’s silent 1933 masterpiece, The Water Magician with a narration by one of the world’s leading benshis, Ms Yuko Saito.
This year, Osian’s-Cinefan has introduced sections that have been specially curated, giving each curator the freedom to select the films of his or her choice. The Silhouettes section will consist of films with women as central characters in an oblique reference to Mizoguchi’s predilection for highlighting the situation of women in Japanese society in his time.