The 11th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) organized by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) will begin on October 29 that will screen around 200 films from almost 56 countries.

The committee of MAMI, a not-for-profit trust founded by Indian film industry personalities comprising veteran people  viz- producer-cum-director Yash Chopra, Chairman of Reliance Big Entertainment -Amit Khanna, actor Shabana Azmi and actor-turned-director Amol Palekar unveiled the line-up for the said annual Mumbai Film Festival yesterday at Sun-n-Sand hotel in Mumbai.

The week-long festival will be inaugurated by the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni.

MAMI will have a five-member international jury where releases of 2009 like Navidad (Chile-France), Seven Minutes (Spain), Soul At Peace (Slovakia), The Blacks (Crotia), and Ricky (France) which competed at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year will be screened. Besides this, Bengali films Janala and Abohomaan by Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Rituparno Ghosh respectively and the Marathi film Rita directed by Amol Palekar will be screened.

The festival will pay tribute to Paul Schrader, who wrote Martin Scorcese-Robert De Niro films like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. It will also honor five outstanding film personalities like yesteryear’s bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor known for his performance in blockbusters like Deewar and Namak Halal along with Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos with the international lifetime achievement award.

Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Informan’t, a dark political comedy based on journalist Kurt Eichenwald’s book of the same name, will open the MFF. While ‘the Dust of Time‘ by Greek filmmaker ‘Theo Angelopoulos’ will close the festival on November 5, said the organizers of the festival on Wednesday.

Best debutant film director would be given 150,000 US dollars whereas the prize for the best film is Rs.50, 00, 000.