The 19th Pune International Film Festival (PIFF)'s official website recently revealed the list of this year's jugdes, including Vietnamese film director Luong Dinh Dung.

Vietnamese film director Luong Dinh Dung will one of the prestigious international judges elected by the Film Festival Council and will be part of the process to select the candidates for most prestigious award in the World Competition Selection category.

According to VOV, Dung will be one of the five prestigious international judges elected by the Film Festival Council and will be part of the process to select the candidates for most prestigious award in the World Competition Selection category.

Dr. Jabbar Patel, celebration chief, PIFF, declared the names of the eight jury individuals, which incorporates Hungarian film pundit Gyorgy Baron, Iranian producer Mania Akbari, entertainer Lisa Ray, Luong Dinh Dung, essayist and producer from Vietnam, Andrej Kosak, movie producer from Slovenia, Serbian author and producer Goran Radovanovic, Sreekar Prasad, proofreader and movie producer Suman Mukhopadhyay from India.

“For both the world cinema as well as the Marathi cinema competition, we have decided that the jury will judge the competition online,” he said.

This comes after Dung was invited to be an advisor for the Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival, one of the world’s 15 largest international film festivals.

Luong Dinh Dung is the director of the film "Father with a baby", which had previously been selected as the Vietnamese film representative to attend the 90th Oscars, in addition to winning many domestic and international awards.

The Pune Film Foundation in association with the Maharashtra government shortlisted 14 films from 10 countries, including one from India, which will compete under the ‘World Competition Section’. Express Photo by Ashish Kale

PIFF is an annual film festival which has been held in the Indian city of Pune since 2002. Each year, the festival receives roughly 2000 entries from hundreds of countries worldwide.

This year's festival, which will be held from March 11 to 18, received 1,600 entries from 64 countries, from which 153 films were shortlisted while 26 films will be showcased online.

Vishal Shinde, appointee chief program and film unit, PIFF, said the celebration will utilize a New Zealand-based internet web based stage called ‘Shift 72’, where watchers will actually want to sign in from just a single gadget at a time.

“Movies shown each day will be available to online viewers anytime for 24 hours and a link will be sent to the registered audience on their email. The identity of the spectator will be registered, which addresses the risk of downloading or recording movies. As for offline screenings, we have seven screens where 50 per cent capacity will be allowed following all necessary guidelines. Seating will be on first come first serve basis, with due intervals between each screening,” he said./.

Hannah Nguyen