Goa is really a state of mind. When I attend Film Bazaar/ International Film Festival of India, IFFI-Goa, it is usually on a tight leash. That’s because it’s close to the deadline for the Berlin Film Festival, and we have hundreds of submissions for the festival already. Of course, I’m particularly looking for a masterpiece or an exceptional film that may be still worth considering, despite it being way after the deadline for Berlin has passed. 

The Film Bazaar Recommends, Work in Progress Lab, Viewing Room and Co-Production Market are fertile sources. Though the volume of filmmaking in South Asia—which is my “territory” for the Berlin, TIFF Toronto and Jio Mami Mumbai Film festivals—is growing by leaps and bounds, it requires year-round research, and painstaking logging and sourcing of films from India in all languages. It also includes Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan, especially to find original and marginal voices who may otherwise find it hard to reach me or the festival. It is a dream job in many ways, even though I have to go through increasingly higher volumes to seek those relatively limited very good films.