Keep Safe Distance
Debottam Basu
India. 2021. 37 min

An 80 year old man Radhakanta suffers a heart attack and an ambulance is immediately called for him. While taking their dying father to the hospital, Radhakanta’s two middle aged sons break into a fight for sole inheritance of their father’s property.

DEBOTTAM BASU

Debottam has studied Direction & Screenplay Writing at the prestigious SRFTI, Kolkata. His film ‘Shesh Krityo/Last Rites’ was officially selected to compete at IDSFFK(International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala), 2018 and has won Best Film & Best Sound Design in Cinematheque 2018. His current film Keep Safe Distance/Nirapod Durotto Bojay Rakhun too was selected at IDSFFK, 2021. Other than these he has made a couple of short documentaries, fiction films, corporate films for Coal India Limited and Northern Coalfields Limited. Currently he is writing a web series, one feature film in Hindi and one feature film in Bengali.

POSTER

CONTACT

basudebottam2311@gmail.com

Water Demon
Bikramjit Gupta
India. 2021. 20 min

Water being scarce, the village women folk cover a long distance to a well in an old fort, to fetch water. One day, near the fort, they find Laajo, a mentally challenged girl, lying semiconscious, with signs of rape and molestation. This was the third such incident.

Tunu, a school girl, while coming home with Amma, her mother, is curious to see a chained-up Laajo. To pacify Tunu’s queries, Amma tells her that Laajo was attacked by a Water Demon, and there’s a spell which can scare the demon away.

Few days later, Amma fell sick. Water at home was over. Tunu left for the well in the fort, to fetch water. On the way she kept chanting the spell in her mind. Gets suspicious about someone behind her, as she entered the fort. She turns around in distress, only to encounter the unknown fear.

Tunu is missing ever since.

BIKRAMJIT GUPTA

I am a film director with over 15 years of experience of making feature films, documentaries, independent films, television commercials, programmes, docudramas, spots, corporate films etc. I write, direct, edit my own films from script to screen.
Over the years, my films have been selected for screening in different film festivals in India and abroad. I have received some prestigious awards for my films. My debut Bengali feature film, Achal (The Stagnant) has been officially selected for screening in Imagine India International Film Festival held in Madrid in 2013. I am a member of the Mumbai Film Writers Association. I have directed the signature film for the prestigious Kolkata International Film Festival 2006-2011.

POSTER

CONTACT

bikramjitgupta@gmail.com

Bablu Babylon Se
Abhijeet Sarthi
India. 2021. 40 min

In order to curb inflation, the Authority privatised all the farming and plantation activities thus forbidding the usage of seeds by common people. One of the companies that is a part of the privatisation is Babylon, which is a leading brand in Seedless fruits, fertilizers, electronics, funeral services, clothing, political parties, etc. Bablu a lonely old man working for ‘ goes on an assignment and accidentally encounters a rebel group planning a secret mission against”.

ABHIJEET SARTHI

Abhijeet Sarthi hails from the city of Raipur, Chhattisgarh. He has completed his graduation in Computer Science and Engineering. He has done his post graduation in Direction and Screenplay Writing from the prestigious Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata. Abhijeet felt deeply related to cinema since childhood and aspires to be a storyteller, showcasing the creativity and craziness of his mind. Though he is an introvert by nature, his narratives do not shy away from showcasing the weird side of the characters and their stories. For him, cinema is a playground to create something interesting and simultaneously expressing himself and let the audience experience the story along with him.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

Bablu Babylon Se emerged after reading a piece of news about a forest getting cut for making a coal mine. It felt absurd that in the mid of increasing global warming, people are cutting the forest. This absurdity is the crux of the story. The absurdity leads to a thought. What if someday plantation and farming get banned. So the aim was to incorporate the absurdity in the script and the final film.

It was important to introduce something as a trivial element and then subverting the audience’s expectation by adding a satirical subtext to that trivial element. I never wanted the film to become preachy with its social message, so as a filmmaker, it was a conscious decision to make the audience experience the film through the lens of its absurd characters, situations, and elements.

PRESS KIT

POSTER

CONTACT

abhijeetsarthiii@gmail.com

Streetwise
Na Jiazuo
China. 2021. 96 min

Dongzi, a small-town youth, becomes debt-collector, Xi Jun’s henchman in an attempt to pay off his sick father’s hospital bills. A cold and estranged parent-child relationship, an unsettling life on the streets, and an ambiguous relationship with a young woman; in Dongzi’s shoes, this is what it is like to be twenty-one.

NA JIAZUO

Na Jiazuo (China, 1989) graduated from the Beijing Fine Art Academy and then the Beijing Film Academy. Streetwise is his debut film; the film picked up the award for Best Actress at the Pingyao Int’l Film Festival 2021, and was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

This is a story about “struggle”. The film adopts a polarising approach with sudden stops and starts that create the audiovisual experience. What blossoms at night, appears to wither in the daytime. The forgotten corners of the city become the focus of the camera’s lens. The green hills and the river on the one hand, and the streetscapes on the other, are the two most important settings in this film, and it is in these two environments that the characters in the story eat, talk, wander, struggle and coexist with one another.

PRESS KIT

POSTER

CONTACT

dorian@cercamon.biz

Under Another Sky
Adrián López
Spain. 2022. 19 min

Jonas is about to die. He is Sato’s father, a drug addict who is accidentally involved in a crime. Jonas, feeling guilty for so many years of abandonement, turns himself in to the police. Later on, the two confront the tragic event that gave meaning to their lives, changing them forever.

ADRIÁN LÓPEZ

Graduated from ESCAC, he focuses his activity on filmmaking and advertising.
Director of the Second Unit in “El Orfanato”, he has directed numerous short films, including “Oz”, selected at the Gijón International Film Festival and the Malaga Film Festival, and “Cuerno de Hueso”, winner of the award Paul Naschy for Best Short Film at the 2017 Sitges Festival, the 2018 TAC Award (Terror Arreu Catalunya) for Best Horror Short Film produced in Catalonia and the Best Foreign Shortfilm at the 2017 Fantafestival in Rome.

POSTER

CONTACT

adrian@animalsfilms.tv

The Tunnel
Mithun Chandran
India. 2021. 24 min

Surangas are man-made tunnels cut into hill slopes to extract groundwater, commonly found in northern Kerala. The film centers around two brothers who have recently arrived at a village for work as suranga diggers. A while later, an old man and a boy arrive to work at a stone pit. But none of these people are who they claim to be. What are their secrets?
What connects them? With the water they bring, surangas are meant to be life-givers. But can they also bring death to some? Reminiscent of classic Westerns, ‘Suranga’ crisply narrates a gripping tale of crime and punishment.

MITHUN CHANDRAN

Mithun Chandran began his career as a software engineer in the IT industry after his B-Tech graduation. Later in 2014 he left his job and started following his passion, directed the short film ‘Thavidupodi Jeevitham’ which was highly appreciated. He continued his journey by joining Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, Kolkata for PG in Direction & Screenplay Writing. As part of his academics project, directed the short movie Bhoomi , documentary Pilandi and diploma film Suranga.

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CONTACT

mtv369@gmail.com

Amira
Mohamed Diab
Egypt. 2021. 98 min

Amira, a 17-year-old Palestinian, was conceived with the smuggled sperm of her imprisoned father, Nawar. Although their relationship since birth has been restricted to prison visits, he remains her hero.
His absence in her life is overcompensated with love and affection from those surrounding her. But when a failed attempt to conceive another child reveals Nawar’s infertility, Amira’s world turns upside down.

MOHAMED DIAB

Mohamed Diab is a prominent Egyptian filmmaker who began his career as a screenwriter. His work has achieved commercial success in the Middle East as well as international acclaim. In 2010 he made his directorial debut CAIRO 678, about a trio of female vigilantes who fight sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo.
In 2016, he followed up with the Cannes Un Certain Regard opener CLASH (2016), an action-packed political thriller shot entirely from within the confines of a police truck. His latest film AMIRA (2021) centers around the phenomenon of Palestinian prisoners conceiving children through smuggled sperm. The Disney+ and Marvel Studios series Moon Knight marks his US directorial debut.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

The fact that there exists some form of immaculate conception in the most sacred and divided place on earth, is fascinating yet surreal. AMIRA is a microcosmic exploration of the division and xenophobia that exists in today’s world. In the process of unraveling our heroine’s identity, the film begs the question, is hatred nature or nurtured?

PRESS KIT

POSTER

CONTACT

distribution@pyramidefilms.com