(From top) Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, Richard Attenborough and Dilip Prabhawalkar in Lage Raho Munnabhai

New Delhi, Oct. 26: Lage Raho Munnabhai might have won critical — and now, prime ministerial — acclaim for its take on Gandhigiri, but it is Richard Attenborough’s 1982 movie that gets a special spot at this year’s International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

IFFI-2006 is being held in Goa between November 23 and December 3. And since this year marks the centenary of the first time the Mahatma tried satyagraha, the festival will see a special screening of Gandhi.

That’s not all.

The information and broadcasting ministry will also try to get Attenborough to attend the festival, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi said today.

He had just been handed over a report from the jury which picked films for the Indian Panorama segment of IFFI.

Lage Raho Munnabhai might still be shown at the annual festival as part of “popular” cinema churned out by the Indian film industry in the past year — that list of movies is yet to be released.

But it would be Attenborough’s Gandhi that would be on the pedestal.

This despite the praise the Sanjay Dutt-starrer has got from Congressmen, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who watched it yesterday.

Veteran Congress leader Mohsina Kidwai raved about Lage Raho Munnabhai at a meeting last month of the Congress Working Committee where leaders discussed plans to mark the centenary of satyagraha that Gandhi launched in South Africa.

Later, Kidwai recalled that when Gandhi hit the screens in 1982, it triggered interest in his philosophy among the younger people.

Of Lage Raho Munnabhai, she conceded: “This film is different from Gandhi.” But she felt the comedy was just the right thing to revive interest in Gandhi among the young.