The 39th Edition of International Film Festival of India, to be held in Goa from Saturday November 22, will open with the film, 'The Warlords', directed by the renowned Hong Kong film-maker Peter Chan. Iranian film, 'The song of the sparrows', directed by Majid Majidi will be the closing film for the ten-day festival.

Making the announcement in presence of the state chief minister, Digamber Kamat, the director of film festivals S M Khan also said: "Films from Asia, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa will compete for the IFFI awards that will be selected by a jury headed by Peter Chan."

Khan said that the other jury members include Marco Muller from Venice; Niki Karimi from Iran; Lav Diaz from Singapore; and Tabassum Hashmi from India.

The festival, from November 22 to December 2, will be held at two venues on the banks of Mandovi river - Kala academy, and entertainment society of Goa complex. It will also have retrospective of Aki Kaurismaki (Finland), John Landis (USA) and Wong Kar Wai (Hong Kong). Also, the five films by NRI film-makers would be screened in Film India Worldwide section.

The Indian Panorama will have 47 Indian films, including 26 feature films and 21 non-feature films. Homage would be paid to G P Sippy, B R Chopra, F C Mehra, Jayashree Gadkar, Raghuvaran, Mahendra Kapoor, Jeeva, Sridhar, Vijay Tendulkar and Nabendu Ghosh.

The DFF director said that India's veterans - Dilip Kumar, Lata Mangueshkar, B Saroja Devi and Tapan Sinha - would be conferred 'lifetime achievement award' constituted by Government of India to commemorate 60th year of Indian Independence. In addition, retrospectives will be given to Bimal Roy and L V Prasad for their birth centenary year and 75 years of Kannada cinema.