The 56th International Film Festival of India-IFFI 2025 will open with a colourful cultural parade celebrating India’s cinematic legacy in Goa tomorrow. The film festival is going to be held in Panaji till 28th November. It will bring together guests and filmmakers from more than 80 countries and 270-plus films from India and abroad. Akashvani correspondent reports that IFFI is a dream-weaver’s celebration, where the flicker of the projector becomes a heartbeat, a mosaic of countless stories converging under one sky.

Spanning across five main venues in Goa, in these 8 days, every screening is a voyage: from the silent tremor of unspoken longing to the roar of revelation, from the indigenous pulse of Indian panorama to the distant echoes of world cinema. Workshops, masterclasses, Film Bazaar markets – each an invitation to the curious, the bold, the heart-hungry creatives. The festival’s purpose holds steady – “to provide a common platform for filmmakers of the world to project their excellence in film art… promoting friendship and co-operation among people of the world.”

The festival is at once intimate and expansive: intimate in the hush of a single viewer enthralled by a frame; expansive in the millions of millions of frames that ripple across continents, brought together here on Goa’s luminous shores. In this poetic lens, the Festival becomes a mirror and a window: a mirror reflecting our yearning for connection; a window opening onto the infinite vault of human imagination. The silver screen invites us to dream, to remember, to feel. And as the curtains fall, the light lingers in our minds – perhaps a flicker, perhaps a flame – reminding us that cinema is more than motion. It is life in motion, and we are alive.