The Damascus international film festival is more than 30 years old, and has been growing at a steady clip: for long a bi-annual event, it’s turned into an yearly jamboree only last year. The programme is a sprawling, bewildering mix, with more than 200 films distributed over 11 days. Hollywood is well represented (the package includes a section on Oscar winners, as well as more recent films ). There’s a sizeable number of films from Egypt, with whom Syria has long had close creative links, as well as from Switzerland, a fresh entrant which has a whole section to itself. There are tributes to Greta Garbo, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Zhang Yimou. There’s also a small section on Syrian cinema; the only section tinier is from India!

So what’s the criterion for selection, I ask Rafat Charkas, the festival’s ever busy general secretary, who’s never in one place for more than a minute. The whole point of the festival, he says, is for the people of Damascus to get acquainted with world cinema, and given the numbers thronging the box office windows at the four festival venues, one can see that there are enough audiences, eager to sample films from around the world. The focus is not on being spanking new, but on providing variety. The Indian segment, which is confined to Bollywood, is a puzzle. Akbar Khan’s two-year-old opus, ‘Taj Mahal’, which didn’t find takers in India, is a centrepiece, with the director there to present his film. ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ and ‘Taare Zameen Par’ are the only relatively new films; the rest of the list is a seriously mixed bag of ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, ‘Dharam Veer’, ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’, ‘Asoka’, ‘Bride and Prejudice’, Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam’, ‘Murder’, and the embarrassingly bad ‘Rog’. The films seem to be here due to a mix of personal enterprise, (Akbar Khan is here on personal invitation, Ashutosh Gowarikar was reached by the Indian embassy in Damascus) and sheer availability.

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