As chairperson of the ongoing Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festival, Priyanka Chopra flew to her home city for the opening of the event, which is being held at various locations across Mumbai. The festival's hub, though, is the recently opened Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, with Ambani and her daughter Isha joining Chopra as board members of the film festival.
More than 200 movies will be screened over the next 10 days, until November 5, with the Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer The Buckingham Murders screened on opening night on Friday.
Kapoor Khan, who was in attendance along with her sister Karisma and husband Saif Ali Khan, called Buckingham one of her “career-best roles”.
Also spotted on opening night were prominent personalities from the South Indian film industry – Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam, Bollywood's grande dame Shabana Azmi, actress Sonam Kapoor, looking suitably stylish, plus Konkona Sen Sharma, Vijay Varma, Rajkummar Rao, Randeep Hooda, and filmmakers Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar.
Some films being screened this year include The Rapist, starring Sen Sharma and directed by her mum Aparna Sen; Kennedy directed by Anurag Kashyap and starring Sunny Leone and Rahul Bhat; as well as Varun Grover's directorial debut All India Rank.
While Hollywood continues to work its way through the Sag-Aftra strike, Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festival will showcase a number of international titles, including Bradley Cooper's Maestro; The Sweet East directed by Sean Price Williams; and Joanna Arnow's The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed.
Other movies being shown in the World Cinema category include: South Korea's In Our Day; Fallen Leaves by Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki; Japanese thriller Monster; and Georgian filmmaker Elene Naveriani's Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry.
