In the middle of monsoon fury in Mumbai this year, the city’s much-vaunted international film festival dropped a bombshell. The Mumbai Film Festival—founded by filmmakers Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Shyam Benegal, Amol Palekar and Basu Bhattacharya— announced in July it was cancelling its current edition slated for next month.

It wasn’t the first time the festival in the seat of Bollywood had run into trouble. Last year, it mounted a curtailed festival after losing its main sponsor a year ago.

The Mumbai Film Festival’s worries symbolise a deeper malady afflicting a majority of India’s international film festivals that have been in decline for over a decade. The International Film Festival of India (IFFI), only a year younger than the Berlin film festival and launched by the then prime min

See Full Page