By Alex Deleon-sinha

 

 

Stuttgart Indian Film Festival

July 17 - 21, 2013

 

By Alex Deleon-Sinha

 

 

Festivals dedicated to Indian film exclusively have begun to pop up all over the map. My latest such discovery was the Indian film festival of Stuttgart in southern Germany (of all places!) which this year celebrates its tenth anniversary. I only became aware of this festival hidden away in the foothills of the Black Forest when Kerala based director Sanjeev Sivan advised me by e-mail that he will be presenting his latest film "Endless Summer" (original Malayalam title 'Venal Odungathe') here this summer.  Since I was aware of Sivan's work from the River to River Indian film festival of Florence, Italy and have been traveling in Europe this summer I decided this would be a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone; visit a major German city I have never been to before, and simultaneously catch up with recent developments in Indian cinema. 

Stuttgart, the home of the world famous Mercedes Benz vehicle brand name, turns out to be a most pleasant city full of greenery, surrounded by mountains, and the festival guide book indicates that the next five days will be packed with a rich sampling of newer Indian films.

In keeping with this being the commemoration of 100 years of Indian cinema the festival will open with a screening of the much heralded composite film "Bombay Talkies" which consists of four 28 minutes segments presenting a kind of impressionistic overview of the present state of Indian cinema as seen through the eyes of four currently influential Indian film directors: Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Dibakar Banarjee.

 

 

Johar who just turned forty is the "golden boy" of high-end Rom-com extravaganzas aimed at the overseas NRI Indian market with some of the biggest hits of the last decade starring Shahrukh Khan and Kajoj to his credit. Anurag Kashyap represents a new wave of in-your-face gritty reality as in "The Gangs of Wasseypur". Zoya Akhtar comes from a distinguished film family and is the daughter of the most famous living film lyricist and writer of film dialogues, Javed Akhtar. Also forty she  recently directed a gigantic international multi-star blockbuster,  "Zindagi Dobara Nahin Milega" (You don't get to live twice') and the fourth director, Dibakar Banerjee, is from the other side of the subcontinent, Calcutta, where he has made three successful Bengali features.

 

 

Already in town for the opening festivities is actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui who, after impressive performances  in Wasseypur Part II as a pot-smoking killer, and a ruthless police inspector in the Calcutta set polit-thriller "Kahani", has quickly become one of the most sought after actors in India. Siddiqui stars in the Banarjee segment of Bombay Talkies on view tonight and hopefully we'll get a chance to chat with him while he's here.

Siddiqui also appears in the one purely Bollywood film to be shown here, "Talaash", opposite Bollywood superstars Amir Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

Selvaggia Velo, director of the well established River to River Indian film festival of Florence Italy is also here, and I will be interested in her observations on this one.