Mumbai 2012 Day #4: Fathers and Grandfathers

'The Delay' (Uruguay, 2012): A middle-aged woman struggles to take control of her life as a mother of three and the daughter of an elderly, forgetful man. What distance will she go to get rid of her responsibilities toward her Dad?

'Like Someone in Love' (2012, a Japanese film by Abbas Kiarostami): A teenage escort spends a night with an elderly man, whom her possessive boyfriend assumes to be her grandfather. What will this lead to?

'Maddened by His Absence' (France, 2012): A father's obsession with the memories of his dead son leads him to increased affection for a kid from her ex-wife's current marriage.

'Beasts of the Southern Wild' (USA, 2012): A six-year old girl learns the lessons on survival as her small isolated community is facing death, as is her father.

'Twice Upon a Time' (France, 2012): A man discovers a child living his own childhood, with the same name, and similar parents - it is a parallel existence of his days as a child before his eyes, as he bonds with them, chasing his own ghosts of the past.

This morning, as I was leaving for the film fest, I had a brief interaction with an elderly gentleman who wished me a good day. I don't know whether I'll ever see him again, but our little interaction had something that I will never want to forget. Was that a trailer of the day's events to unfold? Going by the five movies I saw today, it seems too much of a coincidence - all these movies talked about the bonds between two generations of parents and children. Life is strange, its screenplay is stranger.

18 movies in four days is a good score. The bad news is - the festival is already past its half-way mark!