Stars give Goa film festival a miss

25 Nov 2008, 0328 hrs IST, Nikhat Kazmi, TNN
Extracts

PANAJI: The Indian Panorama section at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2008 seems to have taken a great leap by bridging the so-called gap between art and commercial cinema. The section, featuring 26 films , opened on Sunday with Yarwng (Roots), a film set in the backwaters of Tripura and shot in Kokborok, a language most Indians have never heard of.

Joseph Pulinthanath's Yarwng , screened yesterday, was a moving document on tribal displacement. It's essentially a love story that goes wrong when a village is submerged by a dam and renders an entire tribe of indigenous people homeless for life. Says Joseph, "The film is a plea and a protest on behalf of the millions who are dispossessed and floating in the sea of life with nothing to call their own.'' The film struck an instant chord with Union minister Anand Sharma who promised to take up the cause of rehabilitation with the Tripura chief minister.

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