Million Dollar Arm closes 35th Durban International Film Festival

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The 35^th Durban International Film Festival ended on a high note with its closing night film Million Dollar Arm (USA, 2014) directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Jon Hamm. 

The screening took place on Saturday, 26 July at the Suncoast CineCentre Supernova. 

Million Dollar Arm is about a once-successful sports agent named JB Bernstein who finds himself edged out by younger, slicker competitors. While watching cricket being played in India on late night TV, he comes up with an idea so radical it just might work. Why not go to India and find the next baseball pitching sensation?  

Setting off for Mumbai, JB stages a televised, nationwide competition.  

Forty thousand hopefuls compete and two 18-year-old finalists, Rinku and Dinesh, emerge as winners. But JB’s job really begins when he returns to America to try to get the two young men signed to a major baseball league. 

Talking about the film, Festival Manager, Peter Machen, said: ‘Million Dollar Arm is a film that is both accessible and engaging as well as being beautifully crafted and filled with great performances. It was a strong festival title, providing an enjoyable note on which to close the festival after ten days of intense viewing.’ 

This year’s festival included more than 200 theatrical screenings and a full seminar and workshop programme as well as the Wavescape Film Festival, the Wild Talk Africa Film Festival, and various industry initiatives, including the 7th Talent Campus Durban (in cooperation with the Berlin Talent Campus) and  the 5th Durban FilmMart co-production market in partnership with the Durban Film Office.   

Melissa Mungroo