A starry affair: Bollywood celebs flag off Indian Film Festival of Melbourne
Darpan News Desk IANS, 12 Aug, 2022 03:17 PM
Mumbai, Aug 12 (IANS) Bollywood celebrities such as Abhishek Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Vaani Kapoor, Tamannaah Bhatia, Shefali Shah, among many others, flagged off the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne to its physical form in Australia with its 13th edition.
Other personalities who were a part of this include singer Sona Mohapatra, former cricketer and ex captain of India Kapil Dev and filmmakers Anurag Kashyap, Kabir Khan, Aparna Sen, Nikkhil Advani and Shoojit Sircar.
The festival, which kicked off on Friday (August 12), will conclude on August 20.
Commenting on the occasion, Abhishek Bachchan, who is "absolutely loving" being in the moment in Melbourne, is excited to watch the screening of his 'Manmarziyaan' co-star Taapsee Pannu's upcoming film 'Dobaaraa'.
He said, "I'm looking forward to watching 'Dobaaraa'. My almost entire family has represented India here and I'm very proud of it. I'm looking forward to being part of all the celebrations and I thank the government and Mitu for having me here. It feels great to be given the Leadership in Cinema award".
The actors took to the podium in presence of a special audience to announce this year's programme schedule with 'Dobaaraa' being the opening night film.
Other events lined up apart from the screening of over 120 films are the Independence Day Celebrations of India and an array of panel discussions amongst other specially curated events.
When asked about the South and Hindi film debate at the festival, actress Tamannaah Bhatia said, "I think this conversation is only unique to India, whenever I travel abroad I never hear people distinguish, they simply call it Indian cinema. And such is the case even here at IFFM."
She feels that the audience wants to see pan India films as more of such content is being made and being admired by all.
Actors Riteish Deshmukh, Sonakshi Sinha and Saqib Saleem are all set to come together for a horror comedy digital film titled "Kakuda". The film goes on floors on Tuesday in Gujarat and is slated to release digitally in early 2022.
Shakti Kapoor is all set to comeback in his popular avatar of Crime Master Gogo on a special OTT project. He had memorably essayed the role in the 1994 film "Andaaz Apna Apna".
Naseeruddin Shah's younger son Vivaan Shah posted a candid picture of his father. In the picture, the actor is seen sitting on his bed with his cat on his lap playing the flute. He wears a yellow T-shirt and white bottoms.
The Mumbai Police on Tuesday made a shocking revelation that arrested businessman Raj Kundra and his brother-in-law Pradeep Bakshi are the alleged masterminds of an international porn films racket perpetrated through their content production companies based in India and the United Kingdom.
Poonam had filed a case against Kundra and his associates from Armsprime Media, the company which was handling her app. She had complained that they were illegally using her videos, even after their contract with her ended.
Neha uploaded a picture with actor-husband Angad Bedi and daughter Mehr. Holding her baby bump in the picture, the actress captioned the image as: "Took us 2 days to come with a caption. The best one we could think of was, Thank you, God. #wahegurumehrkare."
