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Works of 3 Indian directors to feature at Toronto film festival
Two of the films selected for the 10-day festival, which begins on September 9, are debut projects and both are featured in the Discovery section, a platform to introduce fresh talent.
Three debut features from Indian directors, two fiction and one documentary, will be showcased at the 46 edition of North America’s leading movie event, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Two of the films selected for the 10-day festival, which begins on September 9, are debut projects and both are featured in the Discovery section, a platform to introduce fresh talent.
Mumbai-based Ritwik Pareek directs the Hindi film Dug Dug, which will have its world premiere at TIFF. A satirical film, it has at its core bizarre events surrounding a motorcycle that unleashes religious fervour.
TIFF programmer Peter Kuplowsky described the feature as a “slick satire of religious commercialism and uninhibited idolatry” as Pareek’s maiden venture “abounds with irreverent wit and formal invention, exuding an irresistible zeal that mesmerises as it begs the biggest of questions”.
The film, inspired by the esoteric temples Jaipur-born Pareek visited frequented with his grandmother in the remotest villages of Rajasthan, “astutely explores the contagious power of faith and its metaphysical - and often transactional -mysteries”, Kuplowsky noted.
Just as unconventional in its theme is Nithin Lukose’s Paka (River of Blood). This Malayalam movie was touted by TIFF’s co-head Cameron Bailey as a “Romeo and Juliet-esque vengeance tale is set deep in the forests of Kerala, where the river is witness to a violent, generations-old feud”.
He went to call it a “riveting modern folktale”.
The third Indian film that will figure at TIFF will be Payal Kapadia’s debut feature-length documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, which is in Hindi and Bengali. Calling it one of the year’s “most electrifying debuts”, TIFF programmer Andrea Picard said this was “a fever dream of impossible love tied to a broader reflection on contemporary India”.
The documentary has already received global acclaim, being awarded Best Documentary at Cannes and Picard gushed that this film “announces the arrival of an audacious cinematic talent”.
