by Siraj Syed June through December is film festival season in India. G5A flagged it off, running though June and July, followed by Jagran in September. October is for MAMI and November for IFFI. The year will end with the Third Eye Asian Film Festival. Of course, these are in addition to many smaller festivals, organised by Consular missions and cultural organisations. IFFI stands for the International Film Festival of India, the only state-sponsored event, held annually in Goa. Some years ...

Check my recently posted reviews of The Whirlpool, The Verdict and the Iranian three grand peaces at the Montreal World Film Fesival's Blog. A serbian review of The Whirlpool (Vir, Serbia, 2013)   Three years after its absence in the MMF's competition programs,  the Serbian cinema can be proud of its comeback with Bojan Vuk Kosovcevic’s movie The Whirlpool, competed in the first films selection. Made for modest, less than $300.000, Kosovcevi...

Abbas Kiarostami, 1997 Palme d'Or winner, returned to Cannes presenting his In Competition film, Copie Conforme. Tuesday morning's press conference, however, veered toward a heavier subject as Kiarostami called for the release of fellow Iranian filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, who has been imprisoned in a Tehran jail since March 1. Kiarostami hoped to draw attention to the struggle filmmakers face in his native country who are persecuted for having creative ideas, for films that haven't even been compl...