Taare Zamin Par best film at Oz Festival

Mitu Bhowmick-Lange opening Festival in Sydney

Aamir Khan-directed ‘Taare Zamin Par’ has been adjudged the best film and Kareena Kapoor bags the Best Performance award at the Sixth Australian Indian Film Festival  that kicked off in style in Sydney on Friday 29^th August 2008 at the Cinema Paris in the prestigious Fox Studios. The festival opened with the screening of ‘Taare Zamin Par’.

Mitu and Achala (L) of MG Distributions at Cinema Paris in Sydney

The festival was judged by the esteemed Australian critics from the Film Critics Circle of Australia Inc. Julie Rigg, well known commentator and broadcaster for Australia’s ABC Radio National, Peter Thompson, film critic and television presenter, Adrienne McKibbins, executive officer of the Film Critics Circle of Australia and Peter Crayford, film critic for the award winning journal “The Financial Times” were absolutely delighted to accept the challenge and judge the films, which will follow in the footsteps of last year’s esteemed winners… Best Film, Chak De! India Directed by Shimit Amin : Best performance: Akshaye Khanna.

 Unlike last year, the Australian Indian Film Festival (AIFF) had a quiet opening in the absence of any big stars or Bollywood personalities. Mitu Bhowmick-Lange, CEO of the Swish M G Distribution opened the festival with the announcement that her company has just opened an office in the US. She was in San Francisco and had just returned before the Sydney opening of the festival. She said the festival, now in its sixth year is fast becoming one of the most anticipated and high profile film festival in Australia. In fact, it has become the biggest foreign languages films festival in Australia.

“We tried to get the stars, especially Aamir Khan, but they were not available due to their pre-occupation with shootings,” Achala Dattar, Marketing Coordinator for Festivals of the Swish MG Distribution told The IS Times. It is likely that the awards function will be held somewhere in March 2009 when the stars are available, she said. 

A major shift in this year’s festival is that Swish has got the support of the Directorate of Festivals, Ministry of I & B, New Delhi and with it the original prints of great classics of Satyajit Ray and some of the brilliant works in the Regional film industry.

Hence, the film lovers in Australia are able to watch the retrospective of Satyajit  Ray’s films. With the sixth edition, the festival has expanded its scope to showcasing retrospective of works of great film-makers like Mani Ratnam and Raj Kapoor in the subsequent editions of the festivals, Achala revealed. The aim of the festival is to bring to the people of Australia the best of Indian films, she said.

 In the new format, the AIFF is presenting a series of superb regional films never before screened in Australia, plus the biggest Bollywood blockbusters of the past years, which serve to make this year’s, programme a well rounded and true mirror of contemporary Indian cinema.

As the travelling festival continues to win fans nationally and Melbourne and Sydney kick off in fine style, we can look forward to perhaps, one of the most successful Indian Film Festivals to date a media release of the AIFF said.