Thirty-three films from the Northeast region have been selected for screening in the week-long prestigious Mumbai International Film festival (MIFF), the largest international documentary film festival organised in the country that opens on February 3.

The films include award-winning works of Aribam Shyam Sharma, Jahnu Barua, Haobam Paban Kumar, Mukul Talukdar, Gautam Bora, Altaf Majid, Chandra Narayan Barua and Mridul Gupta among others. All these are part of a special Northeast package that was introduced in the MIFF in 2006. The Northeast package will open with A quest for the Brahmaputra — a 54-minute film by Jahnu Barua, which tells the story of the great river and its bond with the people living by it.

It is an interesting package that will run into a total of over 12 hours.

The subjects of the documentary films will range from the tradition of making rice brew to how an obscure village outside Guwahati strives to catch up with the changing global economy, from death rites of the Rabha tribals to folk tales from Nagaland,” said Chandan Sharma, a Guwahati-based journalist and film critic, the curator of the package.

Israel Ram Tana Dilna by Pradeep Gogoi, for instance, is about the Chinlung tribe of Mizoram, which claims to have its roots in Israel. “There is also an interesting film called Joseph ki Macha, which is about the ongoing socio-political unrest in Manipur,” said Sharma.

Other interesting films include Spirit of the Graceful Lineage by Prerona Barbarua Sharma, which looks at the unexplored traits associated with Meghalaya’s matriarchal society; The Green Warriors: Apatanis, a film on the typical agricultural practices of the Spatani tribals of Arunachal Pradesh; and Sand Castle, a film on the Bangladeshi migrants who mostly live on the temporary sand bars on the Brahmaputra.