The 27^th Kolkata International Film Festival was inaugurated by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and TMC MP Shatrughan Sinha.

Also gracing the occasion were Dev, Sayantika Banerjee, Raj Chakraborty, Ranjit Mallick, Koel Mallick, Paoli Dam, Nusrat Jahan, Indrani Halder, and others.

Mamata Banerjee appealed to Shatrughan Sinha to urge Bollywood film producers to invest in Bengali films.

Shatrughan Sinha remembered how he had worked with Goutam Ghose, which was an amazing memory for him.

The opening film for the festival was Satyajit Ray’s film Aranyer Din Ratri.

The focus country is Finland. Compartment No 6, Tove, Ladies of Steel, Games People Play, A Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See the Titanic, The Other Side of Hope, and The Haven will be shown at the film festival.

KIFF is accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Association, Belgium.

104 feature films and 59 short and documentary films were shortlisted from a total of 1698 films from 71 countries. A total of 163 films including 46 foreign films have been selected from 40 countries and will be shown at the festival.

The total number of shows is 200, and the number of venues is 10 (Nandan-1, Nandan-2, Nandan-3, Rabindra Sadan, Sisir Mancha, Conference Hall, Kolkata Information Center, Chalachitra Satabarsha Bhavan, Rabindra Okakura Bhavan, Nazrul Tirtha I, and Nazrul Tirtha II.

There are 59 films in the competition section.

The Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture will be delivered by renowned filmmaker Shoojit Sircar on 26^th April at Sisir Mancha.

The birth centenary of Satyajit Ray will be celebrated by felicitating and honoring veteran artists and senior technicians who have worked with the legend in his films. The event is titled Satyajit-er Shilpira and will take place at Rabindra Sadan on 1^st May 2022 at 3 pm.

A special tribute will be paid to Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Dilip Kumar, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Claude Carriere, Swatilekha Sengupta, and Sumitra Bhave.

There will be exhibitions on the life and works of Satyajit Ray at Nandan Foyer and Nazrul Tirtha, New Town. Exhibitions at Gaganendra Pradarshashala 1^st floor and ground floor on Special Tribute to Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Lata Mangeshkar, Dilip Kumar, Bappi Lahiri, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, Swatilekha Sengupta, Abhishek Chatterjee, and Sumitra Bhave will be inaugurated.

Cine Adda which has been organized since 25^th KIFF will be held at Ektara Mancha in Nandan-Rabindra Sadan complex from 27^th to 30^th April, 6 pm onwards.

The closing ceremony will be on 1^st May, at 6 pm at Rabindra Sadan.

Priyanka Dutta