MUMBAI: A total of 44 films from sixteen countries including India have been shortlisted for the International Competition while 54 films from fourteen states have been selected for the National Competition of the forthcoming Mumbai International Film Festival for short, documentary and animation films early next month.

Films Division Chief Producer Kuldeep Sinha today revealed that a total of 228 films from 37 countries had been received for the international section 543 films had been received from within the country.

Apart from the competition sections, a total of nine international films will be showcased in other sections and 13 Indian films will be shown in the Special screening section.

Referring to the fact that MIFF had become the third largest documentary festival in the world, Mr Sinha said the tenth edition this year – the festival commenced in 1990 and is held every alternate year – will have several new features.

Reiterating his demand for a separate television channel for documentary, short and animation films, he claimed that the documentary cinema movement had seen a revival over the past few years and documentary films were getting greater acceptance among people than ever before.

He said while Doordarshan was showing films made by the Division, there were some technical hitches in giving films to private television channels. However, he claimed that festivals of short films had been held in different parts of the country over the past year.

He announced that MIFF being held from 3 to 9 February will have separate sections of films from the SAARC countries, South Africa, and Brazil. The Festival at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Nariman Point, Mumbai is organized by the Films Division, with the support of the Government of Maharashtra.

There will be a section called ‘Best of Festivals’ for selected films from some renowned documentary, short and animation film festivals and Oscar winning and nominated films, a retrospective of films by jury members, a section of Classics featuring films of great masters of documentary films which will have films made by Great Masters like Bert Haanstra, Robert J. Flaherty, Francois Truffaut, Istvan Szabo, Kristof Zanussi and Ritwik Ghatak. This package will be organized with the support of National Film Archive of India.

A Film Memoir shows biographical films made on great filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, and Bimal Roy, while Adult Cartoons is a collection of animation films made for adult viewers by the National Film Board of Canada.

There is a special and rarely seen section on films on the Second World War with rarest film records of the Indian troops in action at various part of the world during Second World War. This will also feature the battle of Britain , Russia and other major incidents of that period. This package is being organized with the help of the Armed Forces Film & Photo Division, Delhi.

There will also be sections for films from the North East and from Jammu and Kashmir, and Glimpses from the archives of the Division, apart from a homage to filmmakers who passed away in the recent past.