The Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) will be inaugurated on 5 December, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced at a Bijoya Sammelan organised by the state government at Alipore Jail museum this evening. She invited all the guests gathered at the venue to come for the KIFF.

The inaugural function will be held at the Netaji Indoor Stadium so that more people could be accommodated at the inaugural function. Besides Nandan, films will be exhibited at several different venues, including Nazrul Tirtha in New Town.

Miss Banerjee went to meet the guests who attended the Bijoya Sammelan personally and exchanged pleasantries. Pandit Ajay Chakraborty, Indranil Sen, Madhurima Dutta Chowdhury, Aditi Munshi, Anindiya Chattopadhyay, Sriradha Bandopadhyay, Anindya Jana sang songs while Tarun Goswami whistled a tune composed by Salil Chowdhury.

Directors Kaushik Ganguly, Prabhat Roy and Haranath Chatterjee were present along with actor Churni Ganguly. Tridip Chattopadhyay and Sudhangshu Dey of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild and Satyam Roy Chowdhury, the chancellor of Sister Nivedita University attended the Bijoya Sammelan.

State chief secretary HK Dwivedi, home secretary BP Gopalika, chief advisor to the chief minister, Alapan Bandyopadhyay, chairman, New Town Kolkata Development Authority, Debashis Sen, and senior bureaucrats and retired bureaucrats attended the event. Trinamul Congress leaders including Mala Roy, Firhad Hakim, Dr Shashi Panja, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Sujit Basu, Dola Sen were present at the function. Amit Mitra former state finance minister and economic adviser to the state government was present .

This is for the first time that the function was held at the Alipore Jail Museum. The area reserved for the Light and Sound programme was the venue of the programme. Members of the Chambers of Commerce, Football Clubs were present this evening. Miss Banerjee came to the venue at 3.40pm before the guests arrived and oversaw the arrangements.

Electric carts were provided to take the guests to the venue of the programme. The entire museum campus was brightly illuminated. Miss Banerjee gave boxes of sweets to the guests