New Delhi. The 10th Jagran Film Festival (JFF), India’s largest touring movie festival to be starting in New Delhi on Thursday today, July 18, is featuring four Taiwanese movies of different genres through its multi-state journey before closing in Mumbai in late September this year.
The two Taiwanese films will be featured at the Siri Fort Auditorium under the 10th JFF’s Delhi Chapter include “Han Dan,” a commercially successful drama fiction released in January this year, and “Missing Johnny,” an award-winning romantic story in 2017 recommended by India’s movie critic Rajeev Masand.
“Han Dan” grossed around NT$50 million (roughly equivalent to Rs.10 crore) in its box office while “Missing Johnny, ” executive produced by world-famous Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, captured four (4) prizes in the 2017 Taipei Film Awards.
The 104-minute-long “Missing Johnny” will be screened at Auditorium 2, Siri Fort at 2.45pm on July 20, while the more-than-two-hour-long “Han Dan” will be played at the same auditorium at 8.15pm, July 21. Both will come with English subtitles.
Ambassador Chung-kwang Tien, Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, said he is delighted to see Taiwanese movies participate in one of the world’s grandest film events to showcase Taiwan’s cultural power.
“Movies are the best contact lenses for people to learn about foreign countries. No significant relationship can stand without a strong cultural relationship,” Ambassador Tien said.
“With Han Dan, Missing Johnny and other Taiwanese movies brought to the India audience, I am sure India will get to know Taiwan more, which in turn will help grow the relationship between our two countries deeper and more diversified,” Ambassador Tien said.
Missing Johnny is a portrayal of three people- a young woman intrigued by a series of wrong phone calls, a young man disturbed by whatever happens around him, and a wandering foreman feeling lost by the breakdown of his beloved car- living in modern time Taipei City. It carefully shows how these three people’s lives cross paths and in which ways their solitude gradually unravel.
Han Dan is based on a traditional religious practice seen in rural Taiwan, where people believe anyone who endures all the explosion of firecrackers by playing the role of deity Han Dan will be given protection and blessings. Starting with a friendship between two young men, the movie goes to find a secret that is related to one of the two men’s painful experience years ago.
In its 10th year, the Jagran Film Festival is organized by Dainik Jagran, India’s largest news daily published in the Hindi language. The Festival starts from Delhi and will go across a handful capital cities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
Besides Han Dan and Missing Johnny, two more Taiwanese films, namely “Breast and House” and “Bad Boy Symphony,” will be screened on later dates according to the organizer’s schedule.
