Panaji: The Maoist movement, farmers' suicides, RTI Act and honour killings dominates the themes of movies at the 40th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa, as it enters the second week tomorrow.

The Indian Panorama, highly awaited because of the presence of four acclaimed directors - Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Malayalam director Shaji N Karun, Kannada filmmaker M S Sathyu and Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh - had run into controversy even before the festival had begun. Panorama jury chairperson and filmmaker Muzaffar Ali faced allegations that at least two jury members, including he himself, were not present throughout the screenings to select the 26 feature films.

The fast-paced changes in Indian film industry were evident in the Indian Panorama in which the films of all the four celebrated filmmakers in the section had been produced by the Reliance-owned Big Pictures. "Indian films will once again get audiences like in the 70s and 80s during the years of great masters like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Adoor Gopalakrishnan," Mahesh Ramanathan of Big Pictures said. "We will facilitate the rapid globalization of Indian cinema," he added. Buddhadeb Dasgupta has brought his new film 'Janala' while Shaji N Karun's new movie starring Mammootty is titled 'Kutty Srank'.

Rituparno Ghosh is back with 'Shab Charitro Kalponik'. M S Sathyu, the director of `Garam Hawa', who has not made a movie in the last 12 years, returns with 'Ijjodu'.

It was, however, first-time filmmakers who received the longest applause in the Indian Panorama. Chairperson of National Children's Film Society of India and actress Nandita Das arrived at the festival with her first film as a director. 'Firaaq', a Hindi film based on the Gujarat riots, drew huge audiences. In his first film, Gabhricha Paus' (The Damned Rain), Marathi filmmaker Satish Manwar dealt with the story of distressed farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra resorting to suicide to end their debt and sorrow-filled lives. "I thought cinema would be an appropriate medium to show the struggle for survival of the distressed farmers and what forces these farmers to resort to the extreme step of suicide," Manwar, an accomplished theatre director, said.

Another first-time director, Avantika Hari, handled the burning issue of honour killing prevalent in North India, through 'Land Gold Women'. New Delhi-based director Sona Jain portrayed the children caught in the web of troubled marriages of their parents in `For Real'. Marathi filmmaker Paresh Mokashi's 'Harischandrachi Factory' (India's official Oscar entry this year), on the making of India's first film 'Raja Harischandra' and Aijaz Khan's 'The White Elephant' (Hindi) shot in Kerala were among the other directorial debuts. Also in the Indian Panorama was Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar's Marathi film 'Ek Cup Chya', which tells the story of a bus conductor who battles corrupt bureaucrats with the help of the Right to Information Act. Ananth Mahadevan's 'Red Alert-The War Within', the story of an ordinary man caught between the police and Naxals in Andhra Pradesh, had its India premiere at the festival on Saturday.

Bollywood actor Suneil Shetty, who plays the lead role in the film, provided the glamour the festival delegates was looking for with his attendance for the premiere. On November 26, the first anniversary of the terror attacks on Mumbai, the festival delegates remembered the victims of the carnage by lighting candles and observing a one-minute silence before screenings. 'Kya Main Qafir Hoon' (Am I a Non-Believer), a non-feature film based on a 26/11 survivor, directed by Sandhir Singh Flora was screened on the occasion.

The festival also celebrated the 50 years of film career of actress Asha Parekh in a special screening of her three films.

The highlight of the Cinema of the World section so far was British director Ken Loach's 'Looking for Eric', a football fantasy revolving around former Manchester United striker and French international Eric Cantona, and Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman's 'The Time That Remains', a satire on life in occupied land. The second week of the festival will see Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's Penelope Cruz-starring film `Broken Embraces'.