Due to the prevailing pandemic of COVID-19 across the world, the Management Committee of Kashmir World Film Festival (KWWF) has taken a decision of postponing the 7 days’ fifth edition of the festival, which was scheduled to start from June 10, 2020.

This decision was taken after the consultation with the members of Advisory Board of KWFF. The decision about the new dates for holding the fifth edition of KWFF will be taken in August or September 2020.

“KWFF is the first intellectual property of its kind and magnitude in Kashmir and since July 2017, we have successfully conducted four editions of this festival,” said a statement issued by the management.

“Our endeavour is to bring this festival in the list of top 10 film festivals of the world, to empower the Kashmiri youth and film enthusiasts with film making knowledge for success in their careers and to empower the Kashmiri business fraternity with film production based tourism business,” Mushtaaque Ali Ahmad Khan, Festival Director said.

“In our previous editions held in Srinagar, we have felicitated the film celebrities like Tabu, Madhur Bhandarkar, Rajit Kapur, Raju Ji Chadha, Rahul Mitra, Saeed Mirza, Govind Nihalani, Imam Siddiqui, Preeti Sapru, Arjuman Mughal, Rahul Bhat, Imran Khan, Ved Rahi, Sateesh Kaul, Vani Tripathi, and others,” he said.

“So far in our last four editions we received more than 460 films and out of those only 136 films were screened, that included films from 15 countries like, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Lebanon, Nepal, Poland, Spain, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, etc. We also had participating films from different parts of India in different languages like Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Gurung, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kuchi, Ladakhi, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Tibetan and Urdu,” he said adding that some of the Classic and Popular films screened in different editions included the films like Do Bigha Zamin, Guide, Bajrangi Bhaijan, Dangal, Kabuliwala, Mainz Raat, Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane, Life is Beatiful, 12 Angrymen, Andaz, Shree 420, Beynd the clouds, Naya Daur, Parmany, Jagte Raho and Laila Majnoon.

So far 30 films from abroad and India have been awarded, he said and added, “More than 15,500 people, mostly of them youth, attended our festival so far.”
In addition to this, he said, interaction with the writers/directors/actors, film making workshops, Master Classes on various aspects of films are also held, in which 672 students have participated so far.
“Most of these include the boys and girls from different colleges and Universities of different districts of Kashmir like, Anantnag, Baramulla, Budgam, Pulwama, and Srinagar,” he added.

The Advisory Board formed for the Festival include the personalities like Anjum Rajabali, Anubhav Sinha, Archana Kapoor, Arunaraje Patil, Ashok Kaul, Govind Nihalani, Sayyed Humayun Qaisar, Komal Nahata, Narendra Mohan, O P Sharma, Pankaj Saxena, Premendra Majumdar, Raj Bansal, Rahul Mitra, Rajit Kapur, Raju Ji Chadha, Salim Arif, Santosh Sivan, Sarvdeep Singh, Saeed Mirza and Vinod Kapoor.

For extending full support and cooperation, he expressed gratitude to the prestigious Film organisations like Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), National Film Archives of India (NFAI), Films Division (FD) and Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI).

He also thanked prestigious media houses at the local, national as well as at the international levels for their tremendous support by giving detailed coverage of the festival through print, electronic and digital media.
“The countries other than India, where the news of our festival was covered include USA, China Iran, Qatar, Bangladesh and others,” he added.