A collective of filmmakers in India have banded together to protest the cancellation of this year’s Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), addressing their concerns to chairperson Priyanka Chopra.
The event had been due to run March 12-22 but, as reported by Deadline this week, organizers have made the decision to cancel the in-person event and replace it with a series of online screenings across the next two months. The fest cited “logistical and financial challenges” as the reason for the move.
In response, multiple filmmakers, all of whom had been selected to screen new work across the festival’s various strands, published an open letter today criticizing the decision.
“This news was a great disappointment to us. Some of us were officially selected in the 2020 edition, and had saved our India premieres for two years, waiting for this festival,” they wrote. “Others had turned down multiple other festivals in India in favour of MAMI. Some of us had paid submission fees to MAMI. Most of us were counting on the festival to give our films visibility and a unique opportunity to share them with audiences, the industry and market as most of our films will not get distribution in the way commercial films do. None of us has a plan for how to proceed now.”
The collective added that the offer of digital screenings “did not adequately address our concerns with the fate of our films”.
“We collectively requested a meeting with the organizers to discuss other ways forward, but this request was ignored. We are extremely disheartened by this,” they added.
The letter concludes that the filmmakers are asking for physical screenings to be reinstated, noting that they are not asking for “extravagant organisation, awards, or ceremonies”.
The signees of the letter are: Achal Mishra; Aditya Vikram Sengupta; Faraz Ali; Gurvinder Singh; Haobam Paban Kumar; Himadri Mahesh; Irfana Majumdar; Natesh Hegde; Nithin Lukose; Payal Kapadia & Ranabir Das; Prantik Basu; Rahat Mahajan; Rahul Jain; Sanal Kumar Sasidharan; and Srishti Lakhera & Bhamati Sivapalan.
Following a significant Covid spike in January, the latest figures of positive cases have stayed consistently low in India in recent weeks, including in Mumbai.
Deadline has contacted MAMI for comment on the open letter.
