FEATURE
SCREENINGS, PAGE 38
Miss Lovely
Jewels in India’s crown
With three films selected for Cannes and a flood of festival-worthy titles on the horizon, India’s dynamic independent film sector is finally coming of age. Liz Shackleton reports
to offer Cannes this year. And while three films have been selected for various sections of the festi- val, there are other hotly anticipated titles from India that are likely to pop up at major festivals later in the year. In Cannes selection are Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss
A
film industry in the 1980s, which screens in Un Certain Regard; Vasan Bala’s Peddlers, following three characters in Mumbai, screening in Critics’ Week; and Anurag Kashyap’s two-part Gangs Of Wasseypur, set in the mafi a badlands of India’s coal-mining industry, screen- ing in Directors’ Fortnight.
Other upcoming titles from India include Monsoon Shootout, the debut feature of award-win- ning
sho r t s
director Amit Kumar;
fter years of agonising about its lack of pres- ence at the world’s most prestigious fi lm fes- tival, India had an embarrassment of riches
Anand Gandhi’s philosophical drama The Ship Of Theseus; Ashish Shukla’s cross-cultural thriller Prague; and Aditya Bhattacharya’s crime thriller Bombay’s Most Wanted, which features The Sopranos’ John Ventimiglia in its cast. Another highly anticipated title, Dibakar Baner- jee’s Shanghai, a political thriller about power- mongering in small-town India, will receive its world premiere on June 7 at the Videocon IIFA
Lovely, a drama set against India’s sleazy C-grade Weekend in Singapore, one day ahead of its release in India and diaspora territories through PVR Pic- tures.
In contrast to a few years ago, when Indian fi lms struggled to make a connection to the global mar- ketplace, many of these fi lms have international sales agents attached — Fortissimo Films has picked up Miss Lovely, Monsoon Shootout and The Ship Of Theseus, while France’s Elle Driver has Gangs Of Wasseypur and Peddlers.
This recent fl ood of festival-worthy titles stems from a dynamic up-and-coming independent scene which has been bubbling away in India for several years. “A lot of strands are starting to fall into place,” observes Fortissimo Films’ chair- man Michael J Werner. “An Indian fi lm community is beginning to emerge that better understands how to speak to the international community, and also what kind of storytelling resonates with inter- national audiences.”
Ishaqzaade ■ 26 Screen International at Cannes May 21, 2012
He continues that institutional support from organisations such as India’s National Film Devel- opment Corp (NFDC) has also played its part. “The »
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