IFFLA's big Opening Night at ArcLight Hollywood was a stunning success. Tickets to the Los Angeles premiere of Rituparno Ghosh's CHOKHER BALI (A Passion Play) were sold out for this gala event. The Opening Night party afterwards at SIR in Hollywood featured an array of festival guests, including IFFLA Tribute honoree KIRRON KHER (KHAMOSH PANI, BARIWALI), along with festival filmmakers MANISH JHA (MATRUBHOOMI), CHRISTOPHER MIGLINO (A DAY IN THE LIGHT), ANUJ MAJUMDAR (EQUATION) and KESHNI KASHYAP ...

Fiction film sectionOrisel Gaspar, one of the lead actresses of Siete dias, siete noches (Seven Days, Seven Nights), had written a song especially for the closing ceremony of the Festival of the 3 continents in Nantes, western France. She definitely put her whole heart in her voice when she sung her moving lyrics after Cuban director Joel Cano received the Montgolfière d’Or for the film in which she co-stars. The movie, which depicts a week in the lives of three very strong women in Cuba, i...

Fiction film sectionOrisel Gaspar, one of the lead actresses of Siete dias, siete noches (Seven Days, Seven Nights), had written a song especially for the closing ceremony of the Festival of the 3 continents in Nantes, western France. She definitely put her whole heart in her voice when she sung her moving lyrics after Cuban director Joel Cano received the Montgolfière d’Or for the film in which she co-stars. The movie, which depicts a week in the lives of three very strong women in Cuba, i...

As Nantes’ competition has rolled on, the spot has already been occupied by four rather different titles: three of them were coming from Asia, Bar Girls (Gai Nhay) from Vietnam, Min from Malaysia and Ordinary People (Malen’kie Ljudi) from Kazakhstan; the fourth one, The Magic Gloves (Los Guantes Magicos), came instead from Argentina.The competition opened with Le Hoang’s Bar Girls, a film that depicts the life of female dancers and prostitutes in present days Saigon. Girls coming from diff...

The 25th edition of Nantes’ Festival des 3 Continents kicked off on the captivating tunes of rai, Algerian traditional music. Singer Abderrahman Djalti, also the star of one of the documentaries on show, Jamel Fezzaz’s La mélodie de l’espoir (Melody of Hope), unwrapped the opening ceremony singing a song usually performed during circumcision ceremonies.The quarter of a century anniversary of Nantes’ 3 Continents was introduced as an unexpected achievement for a festival that started sma...