'Tumbbad', 'Music Teacher', 'Ahare Mon' ... A mix of festival favourites and new discoveries from India will screen at the South Asian festival in New York
The South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) creates a platform for filmmakers from the South Asian/Indian Diasporas to connect and showcase their work. The largest film premiere destination for these filmmakers in the United States, the festival has been running for 15 years in New York, the capital of independent filmmaking in India. It caters to films from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal, with a focus on dynamic, visionary cinema.
Opening the festival this year is the chilling fantasy-thriller, Tumbbad, produced and starring Sohum Shah. A debut venture, co-directed by Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad, the film has been making waves the world over after its world premiere at the opening film of Venice International Film Festival’s Critics’ Week. Since then it screened at Fantastic Fest, Texas; Busan International Film Festival; BFI London Film Festival, and will go on to screen at the International Film Festival and Awards, Macao in December. ‘Tumbbad’ makes a frightfully thrilling comment on human avarice and its fatal consequences. The film released theatrically in Mumbai on October 12.
“Though the film is directed by newcomers Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad (the latter is credited as co-director), who like Sohum Shah and several other members of the cast and crew were involved in Anand Gandhi’s 2013 cult film Ship of Theseus, there is nothing amateurish or uncertain about the production. The meticulous art direction and costume design combine with Pankaj Kumar's smoky lighting to evoke a breathless mood that carries the film from its first creepy scenes in a rain-soaked hut to the final inevitable debacle. Shah does a spectacular job of creating a fascinating, lustful rogue who, by his own admission, has only one quality: greed.”
– Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
Manav Kaul and Amrita Bagchi in 'Music Teacher'
The SAIFF program's Centerpiece film is Sarthak Dasgupta’s Music Teacher, which made its world premiere at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival and screened at the Indian Film Festival of Houston. Set against the landscape of Himachal, is a heartwarming story of love and its many failures. Despite his ambitions to make it big, Beni, is still stuck in the hills, bitter and hurt, struggling to make ends meet by teaching music and singing in clubs. Jyotsna, his estranged student and now a Bollywood singer, left the hills eight years ago. The town is abuzz with the news of Jyotsna’s return to perform at a music concert. Beni has to come to terms with the pains of the past and the delusions of the present to deal with both, Jyotsna’s presence in the hills and in his life. Winner of the Mahindra-Sundance Global Filmmaker Award in 2013 for the screenplay of ‘The Music Teacher’, Sarthak Dasgupta, is a singer turned filmmaker. His debut feature was ‘The Great Indian Butterfly’.
Sridhar Rangayan’s feature about the stark realities of homosexuality in our society, Evening Shadows, will also screen at the festival. The film envisages a universal story about a mother-son bonding and their emotional strength to withstand the ravages of time and harsh realities.
Pratim D Gupta’s romantic Bengali drama, Ahare Mon, is a heartwarming collage of inter-connected and forbidden love stories which screened at the Pondicherry International Film Festival. The director’s fourth directorial venture, Gupta was formerly a movie critic with The Telegraph. His feature film debut ‘Paanch Adhyay’ (2012) premiered at SAIFF itself and was picked as the New Voice in Indian Cinema at the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI). Post this he made ‘Shaheb Bibi Golaam ’ which was the first mainstream Bengali film to be picked up by Netflix and went on to win six Filmfare awards. ‘Maacher Jhol’ (2017) his third feature, screened at IFFI, Goa’s Indian Panorama section and was later picked up by Netflix. Ahare Mon is Pratim’s fourth feature film.
SAIFF’s short film lineup will screen Preeti Singh’s The Lovers, on Anirudh, who is charged with a domestic violence case by his wife. The film conveys how a lack of communication in families can destroy many lives in a marriage. Singh’s debut short ‘Dom’ (2016) which she wrote, directed and produced screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner. A majority of her work involves documentaries, advertisements and web series. Award-winning ad man and filmmaker, Ambar Chakravarty, presents his endearing short #PuranaPyaar (#VintageLove) starring Mohan Agashe and Lillette Dubey. The film tells the simple story of an old couple who run away from their old age home in search of freedom, adventure and possibly a new shot at romance.
Vishesh Mankal’s debut independent short Harmless begins as a crime-thriller and develops into a dramatic adventure with a little bit of romance thrown in. Made on a tight budget and without financial backing, Mankal had been working on advertisements, corporate and training films for various companies and agencies before he managed to make his debut.
The only Indian documentary in the lineup is Vani Subramanian’s The Death of Us which presents different perspectives on the injustice and the futility of capital punishment through six case studies. The PSBT film examines cases like the highly publicised executions of Dhananjoy Chatterjee and Afzal Guru. It was the closing film at the PSBT Open Frame Film Festival, New Delhi and argues that it is time to re-examine the law on capital punishment and its ability to deter crime. Subramanian is known for her films ‘Meals Ready’ (1993) and 'Ayodhya Gatha’ (2006).
A still from the documentary 'The Death Of Us'
Some Pakistani titles in the selection include Uzair Zaheer Khan’s Allahyar and the Legend of Markhor on the preservation and respect of the wildlife, and the feature-length documentary, Salam, by Anand Kamalakar, Omar Vandal And Zakir Thaver on the Nobel prize-winning Pakistani physicist, Abdus Salam.
Presented by HBO, the South Asian International Film Festival runs from December 12 to 16 in New York City, NY.
For the entire program: http://saiff.org/2018/all-films-events/