Shekhar Kapur to serve as international competition jury head for IFFI 54

Renowned filmmaker Shekhar Kapur will be the jury head for the international competition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2023 in Goa next month.

The five-member jury also includes cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine, producers Jerome Paillard, Catherine Dussart, and Helen Leake, according to a press release.

"The International Jury will select the winner of the coveted best film award which includes the Golden Peacock, Rs 40 lakh monetary component, and certificates for the director and producer.

"Apart from the best film, the jury will also determine winners in the best director, best actor (male), best actor (female), and special jury prize categories," it added.

The international jury will also pick the winner for the festival's best debut feature film of a director award that will see 7 first-time filmmakers compete for the coveted Silver Peacock, Rs 10 lakh, and a certificate.

Kapur is best known for directing classics such as Masoom and Mr India. He successfully branched out to Hollywood with the Oscar-nominated period drama Elizabeth, The Four Feathers, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

For the current edition of the IFFI, which will run from November 20 to 28, the organisers have received "a record-breaking 2926 entries from 105 countries".

Last year, the festival had run into a major controversy after Nadav Lapid, the jury head of the international competition, had criticised filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri's The Kashmir Files as “vulgar” and “propaganda”.

The Kashmir Files, which depicted the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits during militancy in the early 1990s, was screened under the Indian Panorama section at the festival.