Vasan Bala’s award-winning sophomore feature ‘The Man Who Feels No Pain’ will compete in the third edition of the International Film Festival and Awards, Macao (December 8 – 14), the Sohum Shah-starrer 'Tumbbad' will screen at the festival and Tillotama Shome will be on the competition jury.
Radhika Madan in 'The Man Who Feels No Pain'
The film will compete against 11 other international titles by first and second-time filmmakers in a line-up that includes Qiu Sheng’s ‘Suburban Birds’ and Hiroshi Okuyama's debut feature ‘Jesus’, for a cash prize of $60,000. Bala presented his second film in six years at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section and won the Grosch Audience Award for Best Film. It then opened the 20th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star in October. ‘The Man Who Feels No Pain' (Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota) has a bizarre, heart-rending story. Surya, a boy suffering from a rare life-threatening disorder called CIP (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain) tries to survive life by fulfilling his Kung fu VHS-filled daydreams. The cast is led by newcomer Abhimanyu Dassani and Radhika Madan (‘Pataakha’), with Gulshan Devaiah, Mahesh Manjrekar and Jimit Trivedi.
Bala took over Mumbai’s film scene in 2012 with his stirring and fiery debut film ‘Peddlers’, taking him in one swoop to Cannes’ Critics Week and on to TIFF. He has since been tirelessly writing and pitching to make his next film, finally finding a liberal, open to ideas studio in Ronnie Screwvala's RSVP.
The festival’s non-competitive selection of international genre films, Flying Daggers, will screen Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad’s fantasy-thriller ‘Tumbbad’ starring and produced by Sohum Shah. The film premiered at and opened Venice Film Festival’s International Film Critics’ Week.
Sohum Shah in 'Tumbbad'
In 19th century India, on the outskirts of a decrepit village called Tumbbad, lives Vinayak, the stubborn, conniving bastard son of the village lord, obsessed with a mythical ancestral treasure. He suspects that its secret lies with his great-grandmother, a cursed witch. Confronting her finally puts him face-to-face with the guardian of the treasure, an evil fallen God.
IFFAM’s official programme jury includes the celebrated Indian actress Tilotamma Shome, alongside Chinese filmmaker Chen Kaige, who heads the jury, director Mabel Cheung from Hong Kong and Australian director Paul Currie. The consummate actor was at Cannes this year for Rohena Gera’s ‘Sir’, the international film she starred in, which won a special award in the Critics Week section where it screened. Shome is known for her breakthrough performances as the family maid Alice in Mira Nair’s ‘Monsoon Wedding’ (2001), and more recently, in ‘A Death in Gunj’ (2016) and ‘The Song of Scorpions’ (2017).
Kolkata-born, Tillotama Shome has bachelors and masters degrees in English literature from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi, and a second masters from New York University in Educational Theatre. When previously based in New York, Shome, in addition to her acting accomplishments, worked as a teaching artist at Creative Arts Team/City University of New York (CUNY/CAT). The Team uses theatre as a medium to promote social, emotional and intellectual growth in communities throughout New York City to explore a wide range of issues including peer pressure, violence, sexuality, substance abuse, parenting, and HIV/AIDS prevention. And Shome’s work in particular also involved prison inmates at Rikers Island and women in domestic shelters.