PIFF renounces around 50pc State Govt grant due to pandemic

The Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) will be held between March 4 and 11 this year. While the Festival is usually held in the month of January, it has been postponed due to the disruptions caused by the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. PIFF 2021 has been dedicated to the frontline Coronavirus warriors. Festival Director Dr Jabbar Patel said that while a grant of Rs 4 crores was approved for PIFF during the last year’s State budget, this year, the Festival will only be accepting Rs 2.5 crores from the Government. 

“We made this decision to ask the State Government to grant us only Rs 2.5 crores due to the pandemic, so that the rest of the money could be used elsewhere. We will get Rs 4 crore each year starting next year,” Patel said. Before this grant was approved by the new State Government in the last budget session, PIFF, which is recognised as the official film festival of Maharashtra, was only granted Rs 70 lakh each year by the State Government.

The Festival will be organised in two formats - online as well as theatre. The audience can choose their platform of choice, Patel informed in the press conference held on Wednesday. This year, the Festival has received 1,611 film entries from 93 countries out of which 180 films have been chosen by the selection committee to be presented at the festival in various sections. 

“Despite all the uncertainty in the world, it was refreshing to see that we had received so many entries even this year. So we decided to go ahead with the process of watching and selecting films even when we were not sure when or how the Festival was going to be organised,” PIFF Creative Director Samar Nakhate said. He added, “The number of entries this year was not affected by the pandemic this year, as the films submitted had finished production before lockdown. However, we might see the effect of the pandemic on the number of films submitted next year, as film production was halted during the lockdown.”

Along with Pune, the Festival is also held in Mumbai and Nagpur every year. It will also be organised in Latur this time.