BRIGHT FUTURES SECTION (home to films by upcoming filmmakers with their own style, vision, and fresh approaches to cinema) –
1. The Gold-Laden Sheep & the Sacred Mountain, Ridham Janve, 2018
(In Competition for €10,000 award)
Cast: Lokendra Gurung, Arjun Pant (real local shepherds)
Inspired by true events, the story of a shepherd’s search for a lost plane in the mystic mountains of Dhauladhar. Blinded by greed, he leaves his herd in the lurch and goes looking for the wreckage on the holy mountain in the Himalayas.
Ridham Janve is a graduate of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. His short film Kanche Aur Postcard was an official selection for IFFI 2013 and at SAARC 2015 in Colombo. Janve’s latest film is his debut feature film, mixing fiction with reality.
2. That Cloud Never Left, Yashaswini Raghunandan, 2019
(In Competition for €10,000 award)
In a village about 200 km from Calcutta, various inhabitants work diligently to produce handmade colourful toys: rattles, flutes and merry-go-rounds. Hundreds are made everyday, and the primary material used is old 35mm film reels full of Bollywood titles: films that knew a different life. This hybrid film plays with fact and fiction, shot just before a magical lunar eclipse looms, and shares the narrative of children who go searching for a ruby stone, two brothers build a single-eyed ladder and a mother waiting for monsoon.
Last year, Yashaswini was selected for a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The programme, consisting of around 50 artistes, gives them a space to research, experiment and produce their own work. Using the familiar tropes of indie cinema, observational documentaries, and found-footage films, Yashaswini Raghunandan spun this folktale.
VOICES SECTION (spotlights filmmakers with a distinctive, confident viewpoint)
3. Widow Of Silence, Praveen Morchhale, 2018
Cast – Shilpi Marwaha, Noorjahan, Zaba Banoo, Ajay Chourey
Set in conflict-ridden Kashmir, Aasia works as a nurse in a hospital in Kashmir to maintain herself, her 11-year-old daughter and her sick mother-in-law. Her husband has been missing indefinitely, like many men in this Indian region, was arrested and never returned. Yet, she’s a half widow, on a quest to obtain a death certificate for her husband since the last 7 years.
The film premiered in competition for the Kim Ji-seok Award at the 2018 Busan International Film Festival, followed by being in the International Competition at International Film Festival of Kerala 2018. Morchhale made his feature debut with Barefoot to Goa (2015). His second feature Walking with the Wind (2017) won the Best Film Award in Rome in 2017 and the National Film Award for Best Ladakhi Film in India in 2018.
4. Bhonsle, Devashish Makhija, 2018
Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Santosh Juvekar, Ipshita Chakraborty Singh, Virat Vaibhav
In a city in the densely populated state of Maharashtra in Western India, people are getting ready for the annual big feast honouring Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, prosperity and happiness. At the same time, however, this also leads to ever more violent tensions between the dominant ethnic group, the Marathi, and Bihari immigrants. Bhonsle, a recently fired policeman, looks on with resignation.
Devashish Makhija He began his career as an assistant director, with Black Friday and Bunty Aur Babli. His short film Absent (2016) was selected at TIFF and NYFF. Having made his feature debut with Oonga, it was his second feature film Ajji/Granny (2017) that was his breakout film.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION
5. Sea of Lost Time, Gurvinder Singh, 2019
Cast: Krittika Pande, Anurag Urha, Akshay Gunawat
An adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s story Sea of Lost Time is set, which though incomplete, has led to a piece of realist cinema.
The graduation film production by Gurvinder Singh for acting students at FTII had set out to direct was terminated mid-production upon the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the head of the institution, a vociferous critic of the dubious nature of the appointment lacking professional merit. The 2015 Cannes Film Festival nominee worked with the materials shot so far to produce this work which he believes honours the writing such as: “They swim to the depth of the sea, passing various levels in time. They see the bodies of their dead floating past them.”
DEEP FOCUS SECTION | ART INSTALLATION
6. Srinagar, Praneet Soi, 2014
Kashmir has been the site of a separatist movement ever since India and Pakistan’s independence in 1947. In an installation that involves dual slide-projection, papier mâché tiles and wall drawings, Praneet Soi eschews media representations of Kashmir and opts for the generation of a personal narrative of the cultural history of Srinagar.
Praneet Soi studied painting at the Maharaj Sayajirao University, India and visual arts at the University of California. Soi moved to the Netherlands in 2002 to follow a two-year international residency program at the Rijksakademie, and has since divided his time between Amsterdam and Kolkata. His work was a part of the Venice Biennale in 2011.
Special Mention –
The story of an unlikely romance set in Kolkata, is not premiering at the festival and is still in development.
Basu’s first feature-length film is one of the eleven projects selected for the 2018 Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) for Script and Project Development via the Netherlands Film Fund (NFF) +HBF Co-development Scheme (with a total fund of €100,000).
Basu is an FTII graduate, recipient of the 2018 – 2019 grant at India Foundation for the Arts, whose short film Sakhisona had won the Tiger Award for Short Films at the 46th Rotterdam International Film Festival (2017).