Five-day Eurasian cine fest kicks off in Mumbai

On Friday, the first edition of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Film Festival was inaugurated in Mumbai with a star-studded evening. This fiveday fest will screen around 58 films from 14 countries in both competition and non-competition categories. The festival opened with the screening of Tamil film Appatha, directed by Priyadarshan. Present at the inauguration were Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, Meenakshi Lekhi, MoS, External Affairs and Culture, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, and Hema Malini, among others. SCO member countries include India, Russia, Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Delegates from several countries were also present at the event.
Anurag Thakur asked Akshay, “Tiger ne toh kaha hai ki overseas films mein kaam karna chahega. Kya hamara khiladi bhi antar rashtriya khiladi banne ke liye taiyyar hai?” To this, the actor replied, “Nahi sir, main aatmanirbhar mein vishwas rakhta hoon. ” Thakur further added, “There is nothing local today. If your content is good then it goes international, it doesn’t stay regional. ”
Elaborating this point during his speech, the minister discussed how new and old Indian films have been popular in SCO member countries. “Indian cinema has been extremely popular across the Central Asian region and have played a great role in people-to-people connections. In 1957, Mother India became an international hit and crowds of people gathered to meet actor-director RajKapoor on the streets of Moscow and Beijing. Raj Kapoor’s Awaara, was one of the first Bollywood movies to be screened in the erstwhile Soviet Union. Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Nargis had millions of fans in several of these countries. In the 1970s, and 1980s, Amitabh Bachchan had provoked cross-border hysteria with his numerous hits and punchy dialogues. Mithun Chakraborty’s popularity and dance moves in the SCO region is fondly remembered and remains unmatched. Baahubali’s action-packed sequences were immensely popular and garnered many fans across the SCO region, along with Ajay Devgan-starrer Drishyam. ”
He recalled that in a SCO youth delegation which he hosted in Delhi, delegates sang various Indian songs and were dancing to the tunes of some popular tracks from the time of Raj Kapoor and Mithun Chakraborty. Thakur added, “That’s the power of the film industry and that is the power of Indian cinema. ”