Indian film ‘Baahubali’ to be screened at Pakistan International Film Festival

ISLAMABAD: The four-day Pakistan International Film Festival (PIFF), featuring prominent filmmakers from across the globe — including India — opens in Karachi on Thursday.
At a time when Pakistani artists are banned from working in India, most recently affecting singers Atif Aslam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan has extended an olive branch with PIFF.
S.S. Rajamouli, the Indian filmmaker behind the epic “Baahubali,” tweeted his excitement over his film playing at the festival.
“‘Baahubali’ has given me opportunities to travel to a number of countries... The most exciting of them all is now, Pakistan. Thank you Pakistan International Film Festival, Karachi for the invite.”
The festival will screen 210 films from different categories, including documentaries, short films and feature films, which were selected from submissions from 93 countries.
“Baahubali” is a two-part action epic, “Baahubali: The Beginning” and “Baahubali 2: The Conclusion,” about the battle for the claim to an ancient kingdom between two brothers. The Telugu and Tamil language films, which were also distributed in Hindi, star Prabhas and Rana Daggubati as the warring brothers, with Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan, Tamannaah Bhatia and Sathyaraj in supporting roles.
Rajamouli will be joined at the event by Shobu Yarlagadda, who produced “Baahubali,” along with a number of other visitors from India. They include: Nandita Das (actor, director and producer of upcoming movie “Manto”), musician Harsh Narayan, actor Vinay Pathak, Zeenat Lakhani (writer of “Hindi Medium”), Saket Chaudhary (director of “Hindi Medium”), Nishtha Jain (maker of documentary film “Gulabi Gang”), Subhash Kapoor (prominent producer, screenplay writer and director), and filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj.
Other films from India that will be screened at PIFF include the Shah Rukh Khan hit “Dear Zindagi,” “Hindi Medium,” which stars Pakistan’s Saba Qamar Zaman, and Marathi film “Sairat.”