The Flight
Buddhadeb Dasgupta
India.  82 min.  2018

Bachchu Mondal is a car mechanic, but most importantly, he is a dreamer. His dream is a simple one, he just wants to fly, an aspiration he shares with his wife, but mostly his son, who actually enjoys his father’s attitude, since Bachchu behaves like a child (in a good way) quite frequently. Eventually, Banchu discovers the crash site of a World War II Japanese plane and decides to rebuild it, without, though, having any clue on how to accomplish that. Furthermore, the place the plane is lying is “inhabited” by ghosts, who have the tendency to share their life stories with our protagonist. While his wish brings him to Kolkata in search of parts, the authorities also begin to investigate him as a life threatening series of bizarre events conspire.

It’s certainly a far cry from the barbarism and stark violence of Dasgupta’s well-known The Wrestlers (Uttara), which won him best director kudos in Venice in 2000. Here, the violence lies within the hearts of people who can’t say no to their futile, dangerous desires, even though they are destroying their happiness. The Indians have been preaching the folly of being attached to worldly things for thousands of years, but evidently the lesson has not yet sunk in.

 

The Bait
Buddhadeb Dasgupta
India.  87 min.  2016

Deep in the wilds of rural Bengal, eccentric faded aristocrat Raja is living in palatial splendor with his voluptuous mistress Rekha. But their relationship is clearly doomed. While he dances to crackly old songs played on a vintage vinyl turntable, she dreams of swimming off to faraway lands with mysterious strangers. Both appear stranded in antique fantasy versions of India, so it comes as a mild shock when a modern film crew arrive from Kolkata with their laptops and digital cameras, enlisting Raja to help them track down a tiger for a documentary project.

Meanwhile, not far away, former postman Goja has seemingly lost his mind and reinvented himself as a tree-dwelling soothsayer, gleaning sufficient clues from stolen mail to offer plausible-sounding prophecies to his gullible customers. And Munni  is a pre-teen nomad girl who earns a meager living for her impoverished lower-caste parents with her dazzling public displays of tightrope walking. All these narrative threads initially unfold separately, then cross and intertwine.

The Bait is based on a macabre short story by Narayan Bandyopadhyay, which Dasgupta first earmarked for adaptation over a decade ago, but which initially proved too blunt and spare for his maximalist magic-realist style. The film retains Bandyopadhyay’s shock final twist, which crystallizes one of many possible meanings of the title, but also fleshes out his blueprint text with extra characters and subplots.

BUDDHADEB  DASGUPTA

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We, the people
Samarth Mahajan
India. 28 min. 2018

“We, The People” explores dissent in India through protests on Jantar Mantar Road, a mile-long protest street in India’s national capital Delhi. Through three indefinite protests at Jantar Mantar Road, the film questions the socio-political reality of India vis a vis the ideals the nation set out with.

SAMARTH  MAHAJAN

Samarth Mahajan is a self-taught filmmaker passionate about telling stories from India that remain invisible to the mainstream. His documentaries have received critical and mass attention in media. “The Unreserved”, his national award-winning debut documentary, premiered at Film Southasia 2017 and has been screened in more than 50 national and international forums. “We, The People”, his documentary about India’s protest street Jantar Mantar Road, won multiple awards at Docedge Kolkata – Asian Forum for Documentary. He is currently directing “The Borderlands”, a documentary capturing human stories from India’s borders. Samarth completed his education from IIT Kharagpur and Young India Fellowship.

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Samarth Mahajan :  samarth.mahajan01@gmail.com

 

Mrinal Sen, an Era in Cinema
Rajdeep Paul
India.  35 min.  2017

A biographical documentary that tries to decode the layers of political ideology, which have been the cornerstone of auteur Mrinal Sen’s cinematic expression. Inspired by Satyajit Ray and Italian neorealismo, Sen, a forerunner of the Indian New-Wave used a range of aesthetic styles to explore the socio-political climate of his times.

RAJDEEP  PAUL

Rajdeep Paul is an independent filmmaker and writer, an alumnus of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), India and recipient of the National Film Award from the Honourable President of India for the feature length documentary film “At the Crossroads Nondon Bagchi Life and Living” at the 61st National Film Awards 2013.

He has written and directed several documentary films, short fiction films, PSA, Animation and New Media films etc and has worked with both international and national producers of repute like PBS & ShowOfForce, USA, Native Voices, UK, Films Division, Doordarshan, Prasar Bharti & Public Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs, Aurora Film Corporation, Krish Movies etc from India. His debut feature film script “The Biryani Seller” has undergone mentorship in the first edition of Mumbai Mantra Cinerise Screenwriting Programme 2014-15 from the likes of Michael Radford, Audrey Wells, Sebastian Cordero, Sriram Raghavan and Anjum Rajabali, and was one of the 18 official selections in NFDC Film Bazaar Co-Production Market 2016. In most of his works he has collaborated with Sarmistha Maiti as co-writer and co-director.
Apart from his film career, he has written two books “3 on a Bed – Contemporary Indian Novellas” and “Davyaprithvi – Heaven on Earth” both published in 2013.

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PSBT :   anjuli@psbt.org

Tales from our Childhood
Mukul Haloi
India.  69 min.  2018

What was it like to grow up in Assam in the 1990s and be squeezed between an insurgency and the Army? Mukul Haloi’s Tales from our childhood sets out to find out.

Made between 2016 and 2017, the documentary comprises shards of real and imagined memories of the battle between United Liberation Front of Assam militants and the Indian Army for the state’s soul.  Apart from interviews with Haloi’s family members and friends, the 69-minute film includes staged sequences in which the director’s friend wears an ULFA uniform and poses as a rebel soldier.

MUKUL  HALOI

Mukul Haloi studied Film Direction and Screenplay Writing at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).  His short films ‘Days of Autumn’ and ‘A letter to home’ received five Indian awards including Best film at IDSFFK and Signs, Kerala.‘A letter to home’ was in International Competition at 27th Curtas Vila do Conde, Portugal. Most of his films emerge from his deeply personal and poetic remembrance of a lost past -a collective and political past. He received ‘Early Career Fellowship’ from TISS, Mumbai to make his debut feature documentary ‘Tales from our childhood’, which deals with his growing up during the violent Insurgency struggle in his home state Assam.It won ‘Bala Kailasam Award for Excellence in Documentary’ and was shown at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and Sibiu International Film Festival. Its is included in the coursework of ‘Modern Indian Studies’, Gottingen University; Germany. In 2017, he was invited to month long ‘Vision Splendid Outback Film-making Program’ organised by Griffith Film School, Australia. He has been writing short stories and essays in Assamese for more than 8 years. He is also teaching film and screenwriting at various independent workshops across the country.

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Mukul Haloi :    haloimukul@gmail.com

Paangshu (Earth)
Visakesa Chandrasekaram
Sri Lanka.  85 min.  2018

Paangshu revolves around Babanorna (Nita Fernando), a launderer belonged to one of the lowest castes in Sri Lanka. Babanorna is summoned to an identification parade where she identifies Lionel as one of the paramilitary men who abducted her son during the 1988/89 insurgency. While Indika (Jagath Manuwarna), the young public prosecutor shows little or no interest in helping Babanorna finding her missing son, Namalee (Nadie kammallaweera), the pregnant wife of the paramilitary man seeks forgiveness from the launderer. As the prolonging hearings in the dilapidated courthouse continues for months, shameful secrets are gradually unearthed by the defeated rebels, victorious soldiers and those who were crushed in between.

VISAKESA CHANDRASEKARAM

Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s debut film Sayapethi Kusuma (Frangipani) was officially selected to more than 25 international film festivals winning several awards including the Best Foreign Film at 2015 Rio LGBT Film Festival and Dr Lester James Peris Award at 2016 Sarasaviya Film Festival. His second film Paangshu (Earth) was premiered at 2018 Montreal World Film Festival. Visakesa has worked in Sri Lanka as a human rights lawyer and in Australia as a consultant for the NSW Government. He has received a doctorate from the Australian National University for his research on the use of confessionary evidence under counter-terrorism laws. He currently works as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law in University of Colombo.

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Visakesa  Chandrasekaram :    visakesa@hotmail.com

Side A Side B
Rahat Kazmi
India.  115 min. 2018

A comedy about Kashmir? Probably not. Well, not at all. The latest film by director and co-writer Rahat Kazmi is a delightful, charming and poignant drama about growing up in a conflict zone. Between the bombs and the bullets, a group of college friends are trying to get the most out of their lives but they need their downtime… like anyone in that situation. Focusing on an intrepid group of four friends (following the style of “Inbetweeners”), are bond by the love of cinema, they get together to buy VHS Bollywood movies but when the prohibition of TV and movies appears (as happened in 1994), the four friends are not to be defeated. What happens then is fun, totally believable and very entertaining. It ends perhaps on a more tense posture. But as Kazmi said at Mantostaan’s presentation at last year’s festival, “it’s a beautiful place with intelligent, cultured and educated people. They deserve the best. And this movie is a love letter for the people of Kashmir, and one that will touch a lot of people”.

RAHAT  KAZMI

Rahat Kazmi is an internationally acclaimed director known for his hard hiting films like Mantostaan and Identity Card. Rahat has won many international awards for his film including Best Director at London Asian Film Festival 2017 for Mantostaan, Best Director and Best film at San Francisco Global Movie Festival 2014 and also Rahat’s feature Identity Card’s scenes were shown at Europian Parliament as a reference for debate on Kashmir conflict.

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Rahat Kazmi :   rahatkazmifilms@gmail.com

Unwanted
Edon Rizvanolli
Kosova/Holland.  85 min.  2017

Teenager Alban lives in Amsterdam with his mother Zana, who left Kosovo during the war in the Balkans. When he starts going out with the sensitive Ana, neither of them has any idea that unresolved injustices and shadows from the past will make their way to the surface. This insightful, mature debut by a Kosovan director reminds us how difficult forgiveness and reconciliation can be.

Unwanted (Albanian: T’padashtun) is a 2017 Kosovan drama film directed by Edon Rizvanolli.  It was selected as the Kosovan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards.

EDON RIZVANOLLI

Born and raised in Prishtina, he was forced to leave for Austria in the early 90’s, after the wars in former Yugoslavia broke out. He started his acting carrier in 1993 as Romeo in an amateur Theatre Group in Salzburg, Austria. This was followed with a contract in a professional ensemble where he went on to act for the next 3 years. In 1996 he moved to NYC and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, for the next two years. After returning to Austria in 1998, he continued working as a stage actor in Vienna. During this period he got interested in the other aspects of filmmaking and made his first short film Blownaway. Since 2007 he lives in Amsterdam where he works mainly as an actor. His debut feature “T’padashtun” premiered at the prestigious Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2017 and was selected as Kosovo’s entry for the 2018 Best Foreign Film Academy Award. He is a member of the European Film Academy since 2017.

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Edon Rizvanolli :  info@asfaltfilms.com

On The Edge
Aldiyar Bairakimov
Kazakhstan.  62 min.  2018

Life is an eternal clash of destinies. The lack of friendly support and family warmth, the conflicts with society are pushing the underage heroes of this story to a dangerous edge.

The film tells the story of two teenagers who come from two opposite worlds. These worlds unexpectedly collide forcing both teens to the dangerous edge.

Aldiyar Bairakimov

Aldiyar Bairakimov was born in 1991 in Almaty city, Kazakhstan.

From 2009 till 2014 has studied in The Kazakh National Academy of arts named after T.Zhurgenov, specializing in “Director, Producer of Cinema and TV”.

From 2014 to 2016 studied at the magistracy of the Kazakh National Academy of Arts named after T. Zhurgenov in the specialty “Directing the author’s documentary film”.

Between 2011 and 2018 Aldiyar created fourteen short movies and documentaries. He was a participant and laureate of many republican and international competitions and film festivals

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Aigerim Ramazanova :   ramazan.work@gmail.com

Lima
Harvan Agustriansyah, Lola Amaria, Adriyanto Dewo,
Tika Pramesti, Shalahuddin Siregar, Agha Fahriansyah
Indonesia. 110 min.  2018

Fara, Aryo and Adi recently lost their mother, Maryam. How Maryam was buried provoked a debate among her three kids since Maryam is a Muslim. Although it seems that the conflict has been solved, there are some things that are still a problem. Fara, who is a swimming coach, always chooses which athletes should be sent to the national trainings. However, he cannot do it without facing the challenges from the club owner. Despite the students never questioned him because of his skin color, Adi, who is usually harassed by his classmates, sees an inhuman event. Ayro, must deal with the inheritance issues since he is the firstborn and Jjah is obligated to come back home to require justice.

Harvan Agustriansyah

Harvan Agustriansyah graduated from the Arts Institute of Jakarta and he did his debut in 2006 with the short film “Sepeda” which was nominated as Best Short Indonesian Film in the Film Festival of 2007 and elected as Best Fiction Short Film in the Film ITB Festival of Ganesha 2008. He participated in the horror film Hi5teria: five stories of five directors, which was projected in the Korean Festival of Puncheon of 2012. In 2016, he wrote, directed and produced “Pangreh”, which was nominated in more than 30 cinema festivals locally and internationally. The next year he got Best Short Film Award at the 4th International Festival of Short Films of Chennai (India), in the International Shared View Short Film Festival (Romania) and in the Peace Film Festival of Asia 2017 (Islamabad, Pakistan).

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Harvan Agustriansyah :    harvankoh@gmail.com