Come Thursday, and the curtains will go up on one of India's most-looked-forward-to movie fiestas - the 36th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in the holiday resort of Goa, showcasing top stars and as many as 200 films.

The 10-day event will be packed with glittering premieres, concerts and sneak previews of films. And there will be several new offerings.

Evergreen hero Dev Anand will inaugurate it and assisting him in lighting the lamp will be screen beauties Bipasha Basu of Bollywood and Kannada actress Thaara. Telugu actor Chiranjeevi will be the guest of honour.

This year French cinema is in focus at IFFI. A special delegation from France that includes renowned directors Alain Corneau and Oscar-winner Regis Wargnier will attend the prestigious film festival.

Unlike last year when the competition section was restricted to Asian countries only, this time it will have 16 entries from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

A five-member international jury headed by Chilean filmmaker Miguel Litin will judge the Best Film.

The Indian films participating in the competition section are: Nagesh Kukunoor's "Iqbal" and Malayalam film "Perumazhakkalam" directed by Kamal.

A retrospective of famous European screenwriter, actress and director Lena Wertmuller, who began her career with Federico Fellini, is also being screened at the festival. There will be student films from Germany and movies from Iran as well.

The festival will also pay tribute to Indian actors Sunil Dutt and Gemini Ganesan and producer-director Ismail Merchant - all of whom died this year - by showing their films.

The festival will show as many as six latest films on contemporary subjects. Well-known filmmaker Prakash Jha will attend the premiere of his film "Apaharan" with lead actors Nana Patekar and Ajay Devgan.

Indian film aficionados will also get an opportunity to interact with international master filmmakers on all parts of cinema as part of a special section called masters class organised by France-based Indian filmmaker Vijay Singh.

The other highlights include a film bazaar, beach screening and a meet the director programme.

Urmila Matondkar and the star cast of Sanjay Gupta's "Zinda" - Sanjay Dutt, John Abraham and Lara Dutta - will perform at the closing ceremony Dec 4.