Film festivals play two vital roles. One, films hold a mirror to society, reflecting what makes their societies tick — internationally, and especially in the rest of Bharat — beyond Bollywood. Second, they offer movies the opportunity to expand box office in non-traditional markets, beyond their usual regional or national home territories.

I recently returned from the 11th Dubai International Film Festival, which was held from December 10-17. The Indian films at the Dubai Film Festival represented exciting trends in contemporary Indian cinema, beyond Bollywood. This is fortunate, because when programming films, you cannot take quality for granted at all; like wine, there are good years and bad years. The seven Indian films included Danis Tanovic’s Tigers, Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court, Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s Chauranga, Kaushik Ganguly’s Chotoder Chobi (A Short Story, Bengali), Rajeev Ravi’s I’m Steve Lopez (Malayalam), M Manikandan’s Kaakkaa Muttai (Crow’s Egg, Tamil) and Gautam Sonti and Usha Rao’s Our Metropolis, a documentary on Bengaluru. In addition, the entries included Ravi Patel’s Meet the Patels (a documentary from the US), and from South Asia, there was Afia Nathaniel’s Dukhtar (Daughter, Pakistan-US-Norway) and Jamshid Mahmoudi’s A Few Cubic Metres of Love, Afghanistan’s entry for the Oscars.