For a week every year, Mumbai’s movie lovers go into lockdown mode, barricading themselves into theatres at the country’s biggest film festival. At the numerous screenings across the city, it feels like someone just picked up the metropolis, gave it a good shake, and out popped everyone you know and their cousin.

I love the whole damn shindig. Popcorn lunches, frenetic dashes between screens, suspending disbelief along with daily life. There’s the reaffirming power of the movies and all that, but also the interstitial bits-and-bobs in this seven-day bubble.

I have not been to any other film festival, so this is likely not unique to MAMI, as Mumbai’s own festival is called. But it is totally okay — in fact, it’s almost standard operating procedure — to speak to the stranger behind you in queue, or next to you inside, or ahead of you for popcorn. I have overheard fragments of conversations between complete strangers on the last Hazanavicius or the next Hong Sang-soo... It’s all very film clubby.

The theatre is your playground — you sit as you wish, where you wish (and cogitate with as much pretension as you wish). The normal rules of cine-going do not seem to apply. It is proper form to clap after the film, during the credits, even if it was a truly terrible film.

Over and above that, a sense of heightened manners permeates the air, as exemplified in the orderly queues before films. People say things such as “sorry”, “after you”, “please, go ahead”, and actually make way.

That is not to say fights do not break out. If you put 400 film-crazy people together in a confined space, expect some fireworks.

Delegates who check phones during a screening are subjected to severe policing. Shoosh-ing will commence. The odd voice will bark out. In the process, more disturbance might be created. That’s just how mob justice serves a good cause. Latecomers come in for similar treatment. You are damned if you think you can pass in front of me to get to your corner seat during this very-important-scene-where-nothing -happens.

The week-long bubble also seems to play with one’s aesthetic standards. I know mine become skewed. My tolerance for the experimental becomes heightened. A film I might have otherwise merely liked, I find myself throwing my weight behind.

At the same time, a viewing portfolio containing the latest Werner Herzog or Richard Linklater wouldn’t be entirely complete without a walkout or two. I apologise to the directors whose films I gave up on. But I also feel some of them should be apologising to me.

Sometimes, though, leaving a film midway becomes a pragmatic, rather than an aesthetic choice. Another movie is likely starting at another screen, and FOMO (fear of missing out) inevitably becomes a way of life. My friends in the suburbs want to know what’s happening in town, and vice versa. Inside theatre A, I am writhing in agony over missed viewings at theatres B, C and D. Each day, as any MAMI-goer will tell you, is about making a series of strategic choices. And then having to live with the consequences of those choices.

At my first fully immersive MAMI two years ago, I made the rookie decision of trying to watch as many films as possible, scooping them up like little trophies for my prestige cabinet. By the end I had seen 20 or so. Last year I was in serious competition with my 2015 self, and ended up watching 24 films. I went for the numbers game, and I paid for it: there was a lot of chaff and the occasional grain.

This year, I decided to quit being an impulsive fresher and be more discerning instead. It’s still a lottery, but I can report that it has been a considerably pleasanter experience — film count: 12, walkouts: zero.

Finally, about the theatres themselves. In the age of peering into small screens, theatre-going is less and less the default option. But for a week during MAMI, the theatre reclaims its place at the heart of the cinematic ecosystem.

The multiplexes have the more comfortable seats, but as a single-screen aficionado, it’s always a pleasure to experience Regal theatre several times a week. It’s art deco. There are just two kinds of popcorn. Both are cheap.

The backaches are gratis, courtesy the awful seating, but Regal still takes itself very seriously as a movie palace, and you have to love its unabashed embrace of its own grandeur. It plays those classic soundtracks — Gone with the Wind , Westside Story et al — before every film, until the curtains rise dramatically, and then we are on our way.

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