IFFI's Journey To Goa

The Story of how India's premier film festival came to the land of sun and surf.

- Manohar Parrikar

The year was 2002. It was around the time of Goa’s state elections and the then Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting Sushmaji Swaraj had just arrived in the state to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Election codes prohibit the use of official vehicles during campaigning so I picked her up from the airport in my personal car.

On the way to Panaji, we took a detour and visited a couple of temples. I told her about Goa’s beauty and we discussed the campaign. She promised me a prize if I was elected to lead a BJP government at the state again. The prize, she added, was to move the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to Goa permanently.

I took this up as a challenge for Goa and was re-elected as the chief minister. No sooner did this happen, that I reminded her of her promise. She immediately cleared the file in 2003 we were on the path to hosting IFFI in Goa for the first time.

Officials from the union Ministry for Information & Broadcasting came to check the infrastructure. The existing theatres were in a pitiable condition – full of pests and dirt. The main theatres of Panaji, including Samrat, Ashok and National, were in pathetic conditions. The officials of the ministry questioned the Goa government officials as to how they could create relevant infrastructure in just a year. This became my next challenge.

Sometime in December 2003, we started planning. By January 2004 we were acting on a presented road-map. The following month it became clear that since there would be a Parliamentary election, we had to complete the process of tenders before March 2004.

Through a fast-track mechanism, we selected Inox as our partner based on their designs and a few other parametres. Global design architecture and urban planning firm HOK were already spearheading master-plan designs for Panjim on other aspects, so we put them on board for IFFI to balance things out.