Film-maker Samit Kakkad recently returned from Canada where his film, Half Ticket (2016), was screened at the 35th Carrousel international du film de Rimouski. The movie has been screened in around 16 festivals across the globe. It has been subtitled in German, French, Spanish and other languages. This year, the film also won the Ecumenical Jury Award at the 57th Zlín Film Festival, Czech Republic.
The director was amazed and overwhelmed at the response he received from children as young as six and seven. “I had a Q‘n’A session with school kids in Canada after they watched the film. I was surprised at the questions these kids had. Right from, ‘Did you shoot the film in the night or was it digitally colour corrected?’ to ‘How much does a pizza cost in India?’, and so on and so forth. These experiences help you grow as a film-maker, as a human being, and above all, tell you that there is so much more to learn,” says Kakkad, who is now taking the film to 20th International Children’s Film Festival India (ICFFI ) in Hyderabad, Telangana.
The Aayna Ka Bayna (2012) director feels that people need to come out and watch more films at festivals. “We need to watch what the world is making. There is so much more to learn and one has to continue learning. On the sets too, I constantly learn from my spot and light boys. We need to have people come and visit festivals more often. They need to groom themselves to get into the space of just watching films. There is either a good film or a bad film, audiences need to train to understand this difference. When you are exposed to films from across the globe then you automatically get trained in understanding good cinema.”
Kakkad’s next is inspired by Saadat Hasan Manto. Titled Ascharya Fuck It, the Hindi film talks about desire and greed intertwining the lives of a Bollywood star, his chauffeur, a prostitute and her pimp. He says, “There was a quote by Saadat Hasan Manto that succinctly put the whole film into perspective, ‘If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living in is dirty. With my stories, I only expose the truth.’ This film is about exposing the truth that underlies the shiny veneer of the film industry.”
{{/usCountry}}Kakkad’s next is inspired by Saadat Hasan Manto. Titled Ascharya Fuck It, the Hindi film talks about desire and greed intertwining the lives of a Bollywood star, his chauffeur, a prostitute and her pimp. He says, “There was a quote by Saadat Hasan Manto that succinctly put the whole film into perspective, ‘If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living in is dirty. With my stories, I only expose the truth.’ This film is about exposing the truth that underlies the shiny veneer of the film industry.”
{{/usCountry}}