Stars and stories from around the world at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival

A scene from the opening film Aligarh, starring Raj Kumar Yadav, left, and Manoj Bajpai. Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival

The 17th edition of Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival opens on Thursday, October 29, with a dash of glamour courtesy of Bollywood and an eclectic line-up of about 200 films from across the globe.

The critically acclaimed Indian drama Aligarh by Hansal Mehta will open the eight-day fest, organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI). Legendary French filmmaker Claude Lelouch's Un Plus Une will bring the curtains down on November 5.

For festival director Anupama Chopra and her team, it’s a proud moment.

“It’s not just films that we’re offering. There’s Film Market, Movie Mela, masterclasses with some legends and active participation from the Bollywood fraternity. It’s the perfect cocktail of art and glamour. We hope people find reasons to celebrate. We’re creating the kind of atmosphere they won’t find anywhere in the country,” says Chopra.

The opening ceremony will be hosted by Kalki Koechlin (Margarita, with a Straw, Dev D) and will include a performance by two-time Oscar-winning music director A R Rahman, who has composed a piece specifically for the festival.

Thirteen films are competing for the Best Film Award in the India Gold section. The winning film will get an investment of 50 lakh rupees (Dh282,600) from Drishyam Films to support its distribution, sales and festival management.

There are 15 fiction features and five documentaries in The India Story category.

There will be six movies in the After Dark section, which will open with Qaushiq Mukherjee's Ludo. Other features include Tag, Turbo Kid and Deathgasam.

In a new section called Half Ticket, exclusively for children, live action, animation and documentary features and shorts from across the world will compete for children’s jury awards.

Children will also learn filmmaking from renowned directors and writers at a special interactive session. Some of the films in this section include Dhanak, Song of the Sea, Lamb, Paper Plane and About a Mother.

In the International Competition section, critically-acclaimed films such as Mina Walking, Sleeping Giant and Songs My Brother Taught Me are competing. Filmmaker Raam Reddy's Thithi is the only Indian film in the category.

Ava DuVernay, Oscar-nominated director for Selma, will serve as the head of the international jury.

The festival will present two Excellence in Cinema awards – one to an international personality and the other to an Indian. This year's international recipient is the renowned Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai (September 11, Tsili), while the Indian award will go the screenwriting duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar (Sholay, Mr India).

The festival will also pay tribute to French director Agnès Varda, who was awarded the honorary Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival. The Indian tribute will be to filmmaker Chetan Anand, whose 100th birth anniversary is this year.

An additional highlight of the event will be an activity called Young Critics Lab, in which 20 hand-picked students will be mentored by renowned film critic Peter Bradshaw.

The festival will also host Mumbai Mart, an initiative that hopes to bridge the gap between content creators and content platforms. In this one-day market, the festival programmers will curate 25 complete Indian projects.

On Saturday, the Movie Mela segment will have leading actors and directors talking about their life and work. There will be a master­class by veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, while director Rajkumar Hirani and screenwriter Abhijat Joshi, who have worked together on hits such as PK and 3 Idiots, will talk about creating blockbusters.

Filmmakers such as Imtiaz Ali (Highway, Rockstar), Zoya Akhtar (Dil Dhadakne Do, Bombay Talkies) and Avinash Arun (Drishyam, Killa) will team up for the Young Adult Workshop, a children's events that address the nuances of direction, editing and production of films.

Films from countries such as the United States, China and Ireland will be screened, including Taxi, The Visit, The Assassin, The Lobster, Mistress America, My Mother and Youth.

• The Mumbai Film Festival runs from today until November 5, visit www.mumbaifilmfestival.com