The Hindu Business Line : Low-key start to Hyderabad film fest

The second edition Hyderabad International Film Festival (HIFF) has got off to a low-key start, with popular film stars, technicians preferring to ignore the event on the inaugural day of screenings at Prasads IMAX multiplex.

But for the presence of the new generation directors like Neelakantha, Deviprasad and Nageshwar Reddy, and veterans like Kodi Ramakrishna and Relangi Narasimha Rao, most of the popular faces of the industry chose to stay away.

The week-long festival is being organised by Telugu Film Directors’ Association, Hyderabad Film Club and Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Despite some hiccups in arrangements, the organisers could offer a good, if not sumptuous, menu of films and documentaries.

Films such as Goodbye Lenin (World Cinema Section) and One-Way Ticket to Mombasa (Finnish Five Section) won the hearts of the delegates on the Day One.

They, however, had to grapple with the change of screens and technical snags in screenings. The synopsis book, the basic guide to any film festival, too was not ready, absence of which was felt by several delegates.

Goodbye Lenin

The German film Goodbye Lenin is about a woman who imbibed socialistic ideology. She suffers a heart attack as police arrest her son and slipped into coma just before the Wall collapses, uniting the two Germanys. But, when she wakes up a few months, all the symbols of Communism, Lenin are gone. Advised by doctors to see to it that she never got excited again, her son wants to keep her mother ignorant of the collapse of East Germany.

He would reconstruct the ambience that existed in the erstwhile East Germany as Western culture spreads like wildfire all over. She, however, relates how his father actually ran away, suffering blows for opposing the regime. She, too, would have followed suit, but stayed back to take care of the children.

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