Red Lorry Film Festival 2024: Oscar hopefuls ‘Universal Language’, ‘Hollywoodgate’ in lineup

Posters for Red Lorry Film Festival; documentary ‘Hollywoodgate’

Red Lorry Film Festival has announced the lineup for its second edition. Curated by ticketing platform BookMyShow, the festival held its inaugural edition in Mumbai last year. While returning to the city for its sophomore year, the festival has also expanded to Hyderabad, and will take place in both cities from March 21 to 23, 2025. The Hyderabad chapter is being called Red Lorry Film Festival: Parallel Verse. 

The festival has a lineup of 120 acclaimed titles across genres and languages. Canadian absurdist comedy-drama Universal Language, recently shortlisted for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, is one of the marquee titles alongside Hollywoodgate, shortlisted in the Documentary Feature Film category. Directed by Ibrahim Nash’at, the documentary looks at the rise of the Taliban in post-2021 Kabul after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

ThisTime Next Year, an English rom-com drama, To Die Alone, an LGBTQ+ story of love and isolation that earned the Audience Award at SF Indie Fest 2024, Failure!, a Mexican-American crime comedy are other titles, according to a communiqué from BookMyShow.

On the non-fiction front, 999: The Forgotten Girls, winner of the Audience Award at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, sheds light on a harrowing chapter of history, telling forgotten stories as 999 Jewish girls are secretly deported on the first Jewish transport to Auschwitz, ordered to register for government work service as volunteers. I’m Nevenka, screened at BFI London Film Festival, centers on true happenings of Nevenka Fernández, a young woman in 1990s Spain who courageously reported sexual harassment by her employer, marking a turning point in the history of Spain and signalling a change in the legal system across the world.

The festival will also feature Mom, delving into the psychological horror genre, following a mother who must confront her dark, buried past in an acclaimed chilling and suspenseful tale. In contrast, When The Light Breaks, the opening film for the Un Certain Regard selection of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, depicts a long summer’s day in Iceland from one sunset to another as Una, a young art student, encounters love, friendship, sorrow and beauty. After creating buzz at San Sebastian International Film Festival, Filmlovers!, a French autofiction essay film divided into different chapters that discuss the spectacular nature of cinema as memories, fiction and discoveries intertwine.