Pick up any film set in Mumbai, and at some point in the story you’ll find the protagonist — the struggling actor, the heartbroken lover, the local gangster — making a beeline to the shores of the city to gaze intently at the sea. We have a bone to pick with them. None of them showed us what’s actually inside it. The Ocean Film Festival India this weekend at the Mumbai Zoo will aim to fix that with a special line-up of films, masterclasses, and explorations.  

“Mumbai has a handful of hills in the heart of its forest. Every year, the city hosts two annual mountain film festivals. On the other hand, for a city that is surrounded by the sea, on a planet that is 70 per cent ocean, we have no film festival dedicated to the sea. That’s as good a trigger as any to put one together,” reasons Paresh Pimpale, co-founder of Ecofolks. For the organisation that began screening select films as World Ocean Day-special events in 2019, this weekend will mark the first full-fledged ocean-themed film festival.