The 17th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival has got bigger and better and you should not miss it

In its 17th year, the Mumbai Film Festival popularly known as MAMI and now rechristened as Jio MAMI promises to be a grand festival and treat for cine-lovers. With an extremely eclectic mix of cinema from across the world, new events and workshops with veterans from the film industry- this year's MAMI is bigger and better.

With less than a month to go for the 17th edition of India’s biggest film festival, the team announced its stellar program line-up at a press conference on Wednesday morning. The line-up includes new programming sections being introduced this year, special screenings and events.

Veteran writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar will be awarded Excllence In Cinema award along with Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai. Tribute will be paid to French filmmaker Agnès Varda and Chetan Anand. Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, which has been digitally restored, will also be screened at the festival. Ray's 'Pather Panchali' completed 60 years recently.

Hansal Mehta's 'Aligarh', which has won rave reviews at the Busan International Film Festival recently, will open the festival this year. The film features Manoj Bajpayee as a tainted professor of the Aligarh University who loses his job after the college finds out he is homosexual. The film also features Rajkummar Rao in a key role.

There are a few new events and categories that have been introduced this year. Half-Ticket will feature films for children. The most outstanding and imaginative live action, animation and documentary features and shorts from across the world will compete for children's Jury awards. Nagesh Kukunoor's 'Dhanak' will be screened under this category.

A category called After Dark will feature horror and sci-fi films. The festival will curate and program 7 films in this section that will be an introduction to the Indian audience to this kind of cinema. Q's 'Ludo' will be screened under this category.

India Story will include films that celebrate the diversity of India- Srijit Mukherji's much atlked about film on India's partition 'Rajkahini' will be screened under this category. From documentaries to experimental cinema to award winning films from Cannes, MAMI will showcase all in the six days long event.

A new exciting event called the Movie Mela has been planned to make the festival an unique experience. On October 31st, Mehboob Studio, will host a day long event which will have everything to do with the world of cinema. There will be movie characters, movie merchandising, movie books, DVDs and above all, movie conversations. Leading directors and actors will be talking about their work and life. Rishi Kapoor will do a masterclass. Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi will talk about creating blockbusters. And stars like Alia Bhatt, Arjun Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra will be there at the front row.

The festival will aim to include cinema from across the world and give budding writers, directors, critics to interact with the industry veterans.