Go Goa

Remind me next time never ever to think that things can go smoothly when the Government is in charge. Total chaos reigned at IFFi yesterday and at 3 p.m. when we entered we were told that we could not collect our media accreditation passes as the counter had shut at 2! wow, and no one informs us. I even attended the press on in Mumbai and there too this was not mentioned. And if you didn't have your media card you couldn't collect an invite! God alone knows what ingenuity I had to use to get an invite and how the photographer entered is another story. Anyhow, that confusion done, we settled down to two and a half hours of speeches (festival director, Jaipal Reddy, CM of Goa, Dev Anand, Chiranjeevi and then the performances: Amisha Patel, urmila Matondkar, Blaze, Meera, Prachi Shah, Dino More and his leading lady from Holiday and the three girls from Garam Masala plus Himesh Reshamiyya and Hema Sardesai. But the best part of the evening was the two-hour Brazilian film Olga. It left me speechless with a lump in my throat. What fantastic acting. It's based on the true story of a a natural-born German woman Olga Benário Prestes, who falls in love with a Brazilian communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes. In the dictatorship of Vargas (1930-1945) she was arrested and sent to Nazist Germany, where came to death in a concentration camp. The scene where they take her baby away from her because she can no longer breast feed is gut wrenching. Here is a link to the film. More from Goa later! Cheerio