15th edition of Habitat Film Festival to be held from May 5 to 14

The Habitat Film Festival will return with its 15th edition, to be held in the national capital from May 5 to 14, and screen award-winning documentaries, including Shaunak Sen's All That Breathes, and a retrospective on late filmmaker Mrinal Sen.

The festival, which will be held at the India Habitat Centre (IHC), will showcase 60 features, documentaries, and short films in 17 languages, a press release stated.

The film gala has planned a Mrinal Sen Retrospective, to mark the birth centenary of the legendary filmmaker. It will screen some of the late director's seminal films, including Khandhar (1984), Ek Din Pratidin (1979), and Ek Din Achanak (1989).

There will also be a panel discussion to celebrate the life and work of Sen. It will be attended by his son, Kunal Sen, film critic Sohini Chattopadhyay and Naveen Kishore, publisher of Sen’s Absence Trilogy.

All That Breathes, which was nominated for the best documentary award at the Oscars 2023, will be screened along with other documentaries that include Colours of Life, Urf, The Show Must Go On and Mask Art of Majuli.

In its Memoriam segment, the film gala will also pay tributes to actors Satish Kaushik, Uttara Baokar and filmmaker Pradeep Sarkar.

Kaushik’s 2014 movie Dekh Tamasha Dekh will be screened at the festival. The veteran actor passed away following a heart attack in March this year.

The festival will screen Parineeta to honour Sarkar, who died in March at the age of 67. The 2005 period drama, adapted from author Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1914 Bengali novella of the same name, had earned the filmmaker the National Award for best debut film of a director.

Noted actor and theatre artist Baokar, who passed away earlier this month after a prolonged illness, will be remembered with the screening of Ek Din Achanak, in which she featured in a pivotal role.

“Indian cinema is clearly going places nowadays and the Habitat Film Festival provides an unmatched platform to sample and assess its most recent manifestations. Features, shorts, documentaries and celebrations of the Mrinal Sen centenary, as well as of the life and work of some outstanding film personalities we have tragically lost recently – there is something for each film enthusiast in this year’s lovingly curated Festival,” Sunit Tandon, Director at India Habitat Centre, said in a statement.