Prayas Gupta’s film The Prisoner won jury grand prize in the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. This award is shared by China’s “The Red Awn”. While seasoned Bollywood director Yash Chopra received FIAPF Award for outstanding achievement in film at a ceremony held on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Kazakh film Talpan got the main award APSA for Best Feature Film.

The first day at the 14th KFF has not been up to the mark as it was marred by several organizational lapses. Nandan-I is the place where most people throng because it is the best theatre among the five. After the customary inauguration, the film started. But it turned out to be a dampener because there were no subtitles. Herzog’s film did not garner much applause from the viewers because the print was bad.

The 11.15 am show at Rabindra Sadan was supposed to be The General by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton. This was one film most of us had not seen. But we were shocked when we heard that it would not be shown.

Renowned filmmaker Mrinal Sen inaugurated the 4th Kolkata Film Festival on Monday. The eight-day event, will showcase 276 films from 62 countries across 11 auditoria in the city. Screenings will also be held at Siliguri, Barasat and Burdwan.

Actor-filmmaker Nandita Das was also present in the inauguration ceremony. As announced earlier Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan didn’t add to the glamour of the ceremony.

The nominees unveiled The European Film Academy announced the nominees for the 21st edition of the European Film Awards at the Seville European Film Festival.

The 1,800 EFA member will now vote for the winners, who will be announced at the ceremony held on December 6 in Copenhagen.

The wait is finally over. For film-buffs in the City of Joy, the 14th Kolkata International Film Festival (KFF) is about to kick-off in another six hours. There will be eager eyes at the Nandan-I auditorium at 6 pm waiting for the inaugural ceremony to get over, the lights to go off and the opening film ‘Red like the sky’, a film in the Italian language by Cristiano Bortone, to begin.

The scheduled French release on February 11 of François Ozon’s Ricky by its distributor (and international seller) Le Pacte could indicate its possible selection for the 59th Berlin International Film Festival (February 5-15, 2009). The director is a regular at the German event, where he has taken part in official competition three times, with Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000), 8 Women (2002) and Angel (2007).

The second edition of the short film festival FulMarxx Shorts Fest Version 2.0, is inviting entries. Festival offers prizes in four categories and a grand prize. The grand prize winner gets a feature film contract from the organizers associate company. Winners are selected through a combination of audience and jury votes.

‘2 Day In Paris’ is an entertaining movie about Marion (Julie Deply), a French photographer and Jack (Adam Goldberg), an American interior designer who are a New York based couple whose relationship seems to have fizzled out. In an attempt to rekindle their romance, the couple plan on a vacation to Europe which goes disastrously wrong with Jack being laid up because of a stomach infection.