One look at the well-produced brochure and the handy schedule told me that a whole lot of personnel and corporate bodies had contributed, in cash and in effort, to put FFFF together. For the forty- two odd films screened, the festival sponsors and partners thanked for their participation numbered the same. With such support, a much better show could have been put up. But that’s another story.

Question arose, why were there only 42 films in three days and three venues? Because many films had repeat screenings. My introduction to FFFF came on Friday, the 18^th, afternoon, with Inside Out, a documentary on girls who question why they are subjected to stares. Made by Divya Cowasji and Shilpa Gulati, students of the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, the film uses propped actors to contrast the plight of slum dwellers with that of independent city girls, vis-a-vis moving about freely. At 27 minutes, it seemed long and a bit repetitive. A girl holding a poster saying “Why are you looking at me?” was an interesting idea and a lasting image.

On its heels came Bharatmata Ki Jai, the name being a pun. Bharat is India and Bharatmata is Mother India. ‘Jai’ means ‘victory be’. Only in this case, the makers are referring to a cinema in central Mumbai, named Bharatmata, and not Mother India. Bharatmata has the unique distinction of screening only Marathi films, and never refusing to screen any Marathi film, big or small. Some very informative facts about the cinema hall’s history emerge in the course of the film. Overall, however, it remains a slightly above average student film. Made by four students of the TISS—Avadhoot Khanolkar, Arpita Chakraborty, Amol Ranjan, Shweta Radhakrishnan—it is 28 min long.

Siti, the most common abbreviation/pet name of Indonesian and Malaysian girls, along with Wati, was the title of an Indonesian fiction film, made in black and white. I caught it much into the second half, and even then, found a discreet exit the better option. Eddie Cahyono directed this 88 min effort, highlighting the plight of a woman whose husband is paralysed after his boat met with an accident. It was crawlingly slow, with most shots dimly lit, apparently in an attempt to recreate real-life ambience, which it did.

Mustang was a cute and touching story about five sisters in Turkey and the wrath they face for their innocent frolicking with boys from their school. A co-production between Turkey, Qatar, Germany and France, it is directed by Denise Gamze Ergüven. Mustang was a hot favourite at International Film Festival of India (IFFI) Goa, 2015, and was appreciated here too. At the spacious Russian Centre, the last two films for the day were No Problem: Six Months with the Barefoot Grandmamas, and Invoking Justice, both from India, and both long documentaries, almost an hour each.

Yasmin Kidwai had an appealing subject: middle-aged grand-mothers from Africa (women there marry rather early) travelling from under-developed countries to Tilonia, near Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, to learn the art of building, installing and maintaining solar panels, to provide electricity in their villages and small townships. I found some issues with the fact that India needs such panels as much as other countries do, perhaps more so, and the facility in Ajmer is too small to cater to such huge needs, so why were foreigners being trained at SWRC? Also, there was almost no information on the founder of the Barefoot College, Bunker Roy, though he appeared on camera 2-3 times. The term ‘Barefoot’ originated in China and its village health workers, and describes the concept of an organisation committed to the poor, neglected and marginalised sections of society.

In 1965, a young post-graduate student, Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, volunteered to spend the summer working with famine-affected people in Palamu District, Bihar, now part of Jharkhand, one of the poorest of India’s states. His urban elitist upbringing had distanced him from poverty and destitution. This experience changed him, and formed the determination to fight poverty and inequality. It became his mission. The idea of the SWRC (Social Works and Research Centre), Tilonia, emerged from these concerns.

The subject apart, some of the footage was predictable, with the African women missing their families, while concurrently bonding with their teachers and local staff, till the final, tear-filled goodbye. It is a painstaking film, not an outstanding one. Deepa Dhanraj has a revolutionary theme in her hands when she focusses on the female Jamaat (community councils) among the orthodox Muslims of TamilNadu, in South India. Divorces, deaths and polygamy—these brave-hearts face them head on. Having established the concept and illustrated it with a couple of cases, the film then runs out of steam, just after the mid-way point. And yours truly runs out of the hall.

Watch out for the next instalment of my FFFF reports.