Balangir: The International Children's Film Festival was inaugurated at the town auditorium here on the Children's Day.

The International Film Festival Organisation (IFFO) is hosting the festival in collaboration with Odisha Film Development Corporation. The four-day festival will conclude on November 17. The IFFO is organising the film festival third time in a row.

Fifty-two films from 22 countries and two films by the Children Film Society of India - The Mothers Day and Gattu will be screened during the event. Secretary of the event Sudhir Kumar Bhoi told The Telegraph that the objective of the festival was to provide kids a chance to watch children's films. "A lot of children attend the festival to watch the best of Indian and international children films. This is an effort to create awareness about good cinema on children and for the children," Bhoi said.

Bhoi further said there were 5464 entries from 170 countries for the festival. "It was a Herculean exercise to pick 52 films from all entries as the selection committee had to watch all the films which took a few months," he added.

The six-member selection committee included thespians Suresh Sahu and Sanatan Thakur, film personality Pradeep Mahapatra and noted litterateur Manoj Kumar Panda. Films from India, USA, UK, China, Iran, Brazil and many other European and Latin American countries will be screened at the festival.

The IFFO organised a free workshop for children on acting last month in which theatre personalities Suresh Sahu and Abdul Jamal Khan trained the kids.

"We congratulate IFFO for organising an international film event at Balangir," said film enthusiast Anshuman Padhi.