Pune: Veteran actors Biswajit Chatterjee, Farida Jalal and Asha Kale will be honoured with the PIFF Distinguished Award at the 24th Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) 2026, while noted violinist, music arranger and composer Amar Haldipur will receive the S.D. Burman International Award for his contribution to music.
Veteran actors Biswajit Chatterjee, Farida Jalal (in pic) and Asha Kale will be honoured with the PIFF Distinguished Award at the 24th Pune International Film Festival 2026. (HT)
The awards were announced by PIFF president and director Jabbar Patel at a press conference in Pune on Saturday, January 3. Patel also unveiled details of the Marathi film competition titled ‘Marathi Cinema Today’, along with workshops, lectures and other key festival events.
The festival will open on January 15 at E-Square Theatre, while the closing ceremony and awards function will be held at Balgandharva Rangmandir. Film screenings will take place across 10 venues in Pune. Online registration has begun at www.piffindia.com, and on-site registration will start from January 5.
Seven films have been selected for the Marathi competition: Adishesh (Ramesh More), Toh, Ti Ani Fuji (Mohit Takalkar), Tighee (Jeejivisha Kale), Jeev (Ravindra Manik Jadhav), Gondhal (Santosh Dawkhar), Gaman (Manoj Naiksatam) and Bappya (Sameer Tewari). The competition will be judged by an international jury, and the winning film will receive the Maharashtra Government’s Sant Tukaram Award for Best International Marathi Film along with a cash prize of ₹5 lakh.
Under Marathi Cinema Today, four films, Sohla (Saikaat Bagbaan), Mukkampost Bombilwadi (Paresh Mokashi), Maya (Aditya Ingale) and Dwidha (Nilesh Bhaskar Naik) will be showcased.
The festival will also host several workshops and talks, including the Vijay Tendulkar Memorial Lecture by noted writer B. Jeyamohan, sessions by Film City, and discussions by international filmmakers and scholars on independent cinema, European cinema, Iranian cinema, and regional filmmaking.