MUMBAI: The three-day Gandhinagar Film Festival will open on 21 April with the state chief minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the festival.

The chief minister will honour Gujarati actors like Asha Parekh, Ketan Mehta and Paresh Rawal.

Hosted by City Pulse Institute of Film and Television, the three-day festival will open with Hindi film Havai Dada that features Anupam Kher and Tanuja. This would be followed by screening of international films from countries like Italy, Poland and the UK.

Three all-time best Gujarati films like Kunku directed by late Kantilal Rathod, Ketan Mehta’s Bhavni Bhavai and Sanjiv Shah’s Hun Hunshi Hunshilal would be screened during the festival.

Films with India as a backdrop, or Indian actors’ foreign films will also be exhibited. While Ila Arun will present West is West, Satish Kaushik will present Brick Lane and Irfan Khan may present his film The Namesake.

The Contemporary Indian Cinema section will showcase films like Gautam Ghose’s Moner Manush, Sekhar Das’s Necklace (Bengali), Hiren Bora’s Basubdhara ( Assamese), Ananth Mahadevan’s Me Sindhutai Sapkal (Marathi), E. Shyamaprasad directed Electra (Malayalam), Girish Kasaravalli’s Kannada film Kanasemba Kudureyaneri, Just Another Love Story (English) by Kaushik Ganguly, and Swayamsidha– A Girl On Red Corridor (Oriya).

Bollywood celebrities like Sridevi, Subhash Ghai, Sudhir Mishra, Om Puri, filmmaker Gautam Ghose and Shyam Benegal and international figures like Italian film maker Italo Spinelli are expected to attend the event.

The festival will close on 25 April.