MUMBAI: The 40th International Film Festival of India to be held in Goa in November has been allocated a sum of Rs 27 million from the Plan expenditure of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

According to a presentation made before I&B Minister Ambika Soni, the Festival will be held from 23 November to 3 December.

Although Goa has been designated a permanent venue for the annual Festival and the state Government has established the Entertainment Society of Goa to collaborate with the Directorate of Film Festivals of the Ministry, a fresh Memorandum of Understanding is signed annually between the two units before the Festival.

As the National Film Awards had got mired twice in court cases, first on the requirement of censorship and then when feature film jury member Shyamali Banerjee Deb challenged some of the awards, the awards for the years 2007 and 2008 have not been given yet.

Following a directive by Soni to clear this backlog, Director of Film Festivals S M Khan in his presentation earlier this week said the 55th Awards for films certified in 2007 would be announced on 21 August 2009 and the 56th awards for 2008 would be announced in the second week of January 2010. Thus, both award ceremonies will be held in financial year 2009-10. The Directorate has sought an additional sum of Rs 20 million for this purpose.

The Indian Panorama of 26 features and 21 non-features would be made by the third week of October.

A sum of Rs 15.7 million has been sought during 2009-10 for participation of Indian films overseas. The focus would be on Dubai, China, Cannes and Berlin film festivals, Khan said.