The inauguration of the 26th Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) will be held virtually though screenings will take place on site.

Only government venues — Nandan, Rabindra Sadan, Calcutta Information Centre, Sisir Mancha, Chalachchitra Satabarsha Bhavan in Tollygunge and Rabindra Okakura Bhavan in Salt Lake — have been chosen this year to screen 81 feature films and 50 short and documentary films from 45 countries.

Bookings, though free of cost, will have to be done on the portal bookmyshow.com for the 50 per cent seats that will be made available at each venue. Delegate registration too will happen online at kiff.in, with the delegate fee waived this year. The QR codes on delegate cards and mobile tickets will be scanned for contactless entry.

Seat booking will start at 10am two days before the screening date of each film. A person can book one seat of every show. There will be a helpdesk at every venue for people without smartphones.

A standee with Covid-safety messages in front of Nandan Sudeshna Banerjee

The festival, which was pushed back from the original schedule of November 8 to 15 due to the post-Puja pandemic situation, will now be held on the same dates in January. There will be no star-studded inauguration ceremony. The honours will be done by the chief minister from Nabanna at 4pm on January 8, in presence of festival committee members.

The inaugural film to be screened at Rabindra Sadan will be Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar, which was Soumitra Chatterjee’s debut film. Tribute will be paid to the legend who passed away recently through nine of his films. Works of actors Irrfan Khan, Rishi Kapoor, Tapas Pal, Santu Mukherjee, danseuse Amala Shankar and directors Fernando Solanas, Kim Ki-Duk and Basu Chatterjee, who passed away in course of 2020, will also be screened.

Centenary tributes will be paid to Federico Fellini with six films, Bhanu Banerjee with two films and to Hemanta Mukherjee, Pt Ravi Shankar and French New Wave director Eric Rohmer with a film each.

Ra.One and Gulaab Gang director Anubhav Sinha will deliver the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture on January 9 at Sisir Mancha on the topic “Social responsibility in mainstream Indian cinema”.

The Best Film and the Best Director will get Rs 51 lakh and Rs 21 lakh in cash respectively along with the Royal Bengal Golden Tiger trophy. In the Indian Languages Competition Section, the Best Film will get the Hiralal Sen Memorial Trophy and Rs 7 lakh. The Best Short Film and the Best Documentary Film will each get the Royal Bengal Golden Tiger Trophy and Rs 5 lakh. Filipino director Brillante Mendoza will be the international jury board chairman.

Exhibitions will showcase the life and works of Soumitra at the Nandan foyer and of Fellini and Rohmer on the first floor of Gaganendra Pradarshashala, the ground floor of which will host exhibitions on Shankar, Hemanta and Bhanu Banerjee. All of them will be inaugurated on January 9.

Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary on January 12 will be marked by screening of four movies and documentaries.

The logo being unveiled Sudeshna Banerjee

Contemporary films to be screened will include prize-winning entries at Berlin, Venice and Busan film festivals.

Discussions on films will be held at Ektara Mancha in the Rabindra Sadan complex daily from January 9 to 15 with participation from film personalities. The inaugural “cine adda” will be on Soumitra.

A press conference was held on Saturday at Sisir Mancha, attended by ministers Aroop Biswas and Indranil Sen, festival committee office-bearers Raj Chakrabarty and Param-brata Chatterjee and actress Paoli Dam among others.