Mangaluru, Oct 25: 'Madhyantara,' a Kannada short film written and directed by Basti Dinesh Shenoy, has been selected for the non-feature section of this year's International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to be held in Goa from November 20 to 28.

The movie is one of the 20 films selected under the non-feature and short films category that will be part of the Indian panorama at the festival.

'Madhyantara' is about the process of film-making. The details in the film are the ones that Shenoy observed over a period of time during his association with the movies in the last two decades, a release here said.

Shenoy, a native of Dakshina Kannada region who now lives in Delhi, has worked as a cinematographer, producer and director. Sunil Borkar has handled the camera, while Shashidhar Adapa has done the production design. Suresh Urs has edited the film and the music is composed by Sidhant Mathur.

"The USP of this short film is that it has been shot in celluloid with a 16 mm camera. This is partially a crowd-funded project," Shenoy said in the release.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.