Kolkata: As the lights dim and the first frame flickers onto the screen this week, Kolkata’s cinephiles will find themselves travelling across continents—through forests in Germany, small towns in Bengal and distant imagined worlds—at the 11th NEZ International Film Festival, which opens on March 30.
Organised jointly by the Forum for Film Studies and Allied Arts and NEZ Foundation, Kolkata, the three-day festival will be held at the Satyajit Ray Auditorium, Rabindranath Tagore Centre, ICCR, and will run till April 1. The festival will screen about 26 films, including features, shorts, documentaries and animation, with shows scheduled from 3:30 pm and 5:45 pm on March 30, 3:30 pm and 5:30 pm on March 31, and from 1 pm and 4pm on April 1.
What sets the festival apart is its sweep. In the span of a few hours, viewers can move from a German documentary on vanishing forests to a Bengal-set exploration of faith and survival, and then into experimental or animated worlds shaped by memory, conflict and imagination.
The opening day will feature films such as ‘The Crown of Exhaustion’, ‘2nd Day & the End of the World’ and ‘Trees’, followed by an evening session with ‘Out of Context’ and ‘When Cassandra Venice Speaks’.
March 31 continues with ‘Snow White Mission Vienna’, ‘We Are Australia’ and ‘The Sleeping Buddha’, while the later session includes ‘Eid Ka Kurta’, ‘Jhanklai – The Mystery’ and ‘Nadharer Bhela’.
On the final day, films such as ‘Utpat’, ‘Janani – The Story She Wrote’, ‘The Turtle Worriers’, ‘Hush Radio’ and ‘What Really Happened Was’ will be screened, before the festival concludes with titles including ‘Shock Horror’, ‘Alien Brihaspati’, ‘A House of
Love’ and ‘Aquarium’.
With back-to-back screenings and brief intervals, the festival promises an immersive viewing experience, offering a cross-section of stories that are at once local and global.