Rubaiyat Hossain selected as jury member for International Film Festival of India

Young and critically-acclaimed Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain has been included in the jury for the 51st edition of International Film Festival of India, to be held in Goa next month.

Rubaiyat, also a writer and a producer, has directed three feature films -- "Meherjaan", "Under Construction" and "Made in Bangladesh."

This is the first time that a director from Bangladesh will feature in the jury for the IFFI.

An official announcement for the composition of the jury was announced today.

The jury will be headed by Pablo Cesar of Argentina. The board includes Prasanna Vithanage of Sri Lanka, Abu Bakr Shawky of Austria),  and Priyadarshan of India.

Pablo Cesaris has contributed to African cinema by making critically-acclaimed films, "Equinox", "The Garden of the Roses", "Los dioses de agua and Aphrodite", "The Garden of the Perfumes".

Prasanna Vithanage is considered to be one of the pioneers of the third generation of the Sri Lankan cinema, and has directed eight feature films including "Death on a Full Moon Day" (1997), "August Sun" (2003), "Flowers of the Sky" (2008) & "With You, Without You" (2012) and won many prestigious national and international awards.

In his early theatre work, he translated and produced plays by international writers, adapted works of world literature to film and has battled against the censorship in Sri Lanka.

Abu Bakr Shawkyor is an Egyptian-Austrian writer and director. His first feature film, "Yomeddine", was selected to participate in the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Priyadarshan, screenwriter, and producer, has directed more than 95 films in various Indian languages, predominantly in Malayalam and Hindi, while also having done six films in Tamil and two in Telugu languages in a career spanning more than three decades.