The filmmakers — Supriyo Sen, Ananya Chaterjee and Sourav Sarangi — who have won numerous accolades at various international film festivals, have also filed an RTI to ascertain the reasons for their non-selection.

Sen, whose 12-minute documentary film Wagah on the Wagah Border between India and Pakistan won 24 international awards, alleged that good films have not been selected deliberately by those controlling the festival.

“It is not about not selecting my film or any other films. We are against the deliberate attempt to stop good films from being shown at the festival and reducing the film festival to a mere bureaucratic exercise,” Sen said. Wagah received the Berlin Today award at the Berlin Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award at Karlovy Vary Film Festival held in Czech Republic.

Director of Bilal — a 60-minute film on five-year-old slum-dweller who takes care of his blind parents — Sarangi, too, has received more than a dozen international awards.

“We will file PIL on the issue. Why is it that films which have been received so well across the globe and received numerous awards are rejected in our own film festival?” said Chaterjee, who directed the 87-minute long Understanding Trafficking that deals with human trafficking.

The directors also claim that the committee set up for selecting films by the Films Division is either not well versed with the craft to judge the films or promotes favouritism on various ground.

Chief producer of Films Division, Kuldeep Sinha, who will be in the city to announce the 2010 MIFF, meanwhile, said it is not possible to screen all the films at the festival. He argued that out of 864 entries with 400 viewing hours only 30 viewing hours of films have been selected.