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Tag: Anup Singh

  • Two internationally renowned Indian films get country premiere at MAMI

    Two internationally renowned Indian films get country premiere at MAMI

    NEW DELHI: Two Indian films that made their mark in foreign film festivals saw their Indian premiere at the ongoing 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival: The Song Of Scorpions by the renowned Anup Singh and Village Rockstars by director Rima Das.

    While The Song Of Scorpions premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival 2017, Village Rockstars was the only Indian film to be selected for the competition category, Discovery, at theToronto International Film Festival 2017.

    Singh, whose film Qissa – The Tale of a lonely Ghost has already won several awards globally, says his film The Song Of Scorpions was prompted by the tragic incident of the Nirbhaya gang rape in Delhi in 2012.

    He also added that the character of Nooran was inspired by his observation of watching a certain section of women singers in rural Rajasthan. These are singers that sing compositions based on the birth of a child and other such rituals but are not allowed to perform in public.

    Singh was responding to questions after the screening of The Song Of Scorpions starring Irrfan Khan, Golshifteh Farahani and Waheeda Rehman opened to a packed response at its Indian premiere at the 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. The film has been selected in the Spotlight Category at the festival.

    The film, which had its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival 2017, is a Swiss-French-Singaporean co-production and has been produced by Saskia Vischer and Shahaf Peled for Feather Light Films, Michel Merkt for KNM in association with Thierry Lenouvel for France’s Cine Sud Promotion and Singapore based Aurora Holdings and M Capital Ventures.

    Village Rockstars is the story of Dhunu, a girl who grows up in poverty and learns to fend for herself. However, that does not prevent her from following her dream of forming a rock band and owning a guitar someday.

    The premiere was attended by Rima Das and the kids who have acted in the film including Das’ niece Bhanita Das who plays Dhunu. Most of the cast members of the film are non actors including Bhanita and the other kids who hail from Rima Das’ native village in Assam.

    This is the first premiere that the cast of the film has ever attended. It is also the first time that they had travelled out of their hometown. And it was a dream come true for them as they watched themselves on screen including Dhunu who also admitted that she wants to become an actress.

    Also present at the premiere was Pan Nalin, director of the TIFF 2015 People’s Choice Award winner Angry Indian Goddesses.

    Village Rockstars has also been nominated for Oxfam Best Film on Gender Equality Award 2017 at the 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.The film was an official selection at Film Bazaar Recommends (at NFDC Film Bazaar 2016), 2017 Marche du Film (Cannes) Work-In-Progress, San Sebastian International Film Festival 2017 and 2oth International Children’s Film Festival. It is also the closing film at the 2017 Dharamshala International Film Festival.

    The Song of Scorpions is Singh’s third feature film is a story of twisted love, revenge and the redemptive power of a song. Nooran (Golshifteh Farahani), carefree and defiantly independent, is a tribal woman learning the ancient art of healing from her grandmother, a revered scorpion-singer. When Aadam (Khan), a camel trader in the Rajasthan desert, hears her sing, he falls desperately in love. But, even before they can get to know each other better, Nooran is poisoned by a treachery that sets her on a perilous journey to avenge herself and find her song.

    The Indian premiere was attended by Singh, producers Saskia Vicher and Shahaf Peled apart from the cast members of the film which included Shefali Bhushan, Sara Arjun and Kritika Pande. Besides this, actor Rasika Dugal who had starred in Singh’s Qissa – The Tale Of A Lonely Ghost had also attended the screening.

    The film marks the second collaboration of Singh and Khan after the much acclaimed Qissa and also marks the comeback of legendary actress Waheeda Rehman. The Song of Scorpions was also an official selection at the 2017 BFI London Film Festival.

    It is also the second feature film of Singh that has been chosen as an Official Selection at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. Qissa had won the award for the Second Best Film in the India Gold competition category in the 2013 edition of the festival.

    The Indian premiere also coincided with the 70th year of the Swiss-Indian Treaty of Friendship and was attended by Martin J. Beinz, the Consul General of Switzerland in Mumbai.

    Talking about the lead actors, the director mentioned how Golshifteh Farahani’s recounting of her experiences of her life in Iran and post her exile from Iran convinced him that she was the perfect choice for the character of Nooran. Similarly, Khan’s ability to depict the good and bad side of a person with the right balance gave Singh the confidence to cast Khan for the role of Aadam.

  • Anup Singh’s ‘Qissa’ gets multi-platform release

    Anup Singh’s ‘Qissa’ gets multi-platform release

    NEW DELHI: Qissa by Anup Singh, which has already won accolades on the international festival circuit, has finally hit the theatres.

     

    Interestingly in a unique venture, the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) decided to release the film across multiple platforms simultaneously. It has been released theatrically, on DVDs, and on some websites as well.

     

    NFDC general manager and head of marketing Vikramjit Roy told Indiantelevision.com that the international acclaim that the film had won all over the world and in India made it necessary for it to be made available on all formats. Roy said that it was not a typical film and therefore the NFDC had decided not to treat its release in a typical manner.

     

    Meanwhile, Anup Singh told Indiantelevision.com that the 2013 film has so far been to around 100 film festivals and won 15 awards, including one in India.

     

    He said the Punjabi film was based on an original story and could be seen in various ways. It had been inspired by the stories he had heard of his grandfather’s struggle during the partition of the country. But the idea of bringing up a girl child as a boy could be seen as symbolic of many things: the desire for the head of the family to have a male child after three daughters, the way many female children were dressed as boys during Partition to save them from exploitation, and the way history and tradition continues to affect even modern contemporary Indian society.

     

    Among other places, the film was one of the nine Asian films in competition at the 20th Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie in Vesoul in France.

     

    Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost was also the opening film of the 43rd International Film Festival at Rotterdam from 22 January to 2 February last year and this marked the European premiere of the film. It won the Audience Award at that Festival. 

     

    The award comprising Euro 10,000 (Rs 9 lakh approx) is given to the most voted film supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.

     

    Qissa which received the Hubert Bals Fund for Script & Project Development in 2004, was made with further support from the Netherlands Film Fund, and was co-produced by Dutch company Augustus Film.

     

    Set in post-colonial India, the film stars Irrfan Khan as a Sikh who has fled his village to escape ethnic cleansing at the time of partition who tries to start a new life for his family. The film stars Irrfan Khan with Tisca Chopra, Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal, Sonia Bindra and Faezeh Jalali among others.

     

    Qissa is represented internationally by Germany’s The Match Factory GmbH. The film had its North American and Asian premieres at the Toronto International Film Festivaland Busan International Film Festival respectively.

     

    Earlier, the film added one more feather in its cap when actor Tillotama Shome won the Best Actress award in the New Horizons competition at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

    In Qissa, Shome plays the youngest daughter of Umber Singh (Irrfan Khan) who decides to raise her as a boy.

     

    Shome made her screen debut with Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding in 2001 and went on to play roles in Florian Gallenberger’s Shadows of Time and Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai.

     

    Qissa also won the Silver Gateway Award in India Gold competition at the 15th Mumbai Film Festival  and the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award for Best Asian Film at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival where it had its premiere.

  • Irrfan Khan to be chief guest in Florence in Italy, ‘Qissa’ to be screened

    Irrfan Khan to be chief guest in Florence in Italy, ‘Qissa’ to be screened

    NEW DELHI: Actor Irrfan Khan, who has created waves on the international scene with ‘Lunch Box’ and ‘Qissa’, will be the special guest at the 14th River to River Indian Film Festival in Florence in Italy.

     
    The festival will screen Qissa by Anup Singh, The Namesake by Mira Nair and Paan Singh Tomar by Tigmanshu Dhulia as part of a special tribute to the versatile actor. Seven episodes of the third season of the American HBO series In Treatment starring Khan will also be screened.

     
    The 14th River to River Florence Indian Film Festival will take place at Cinema Odeon in Florence (Piazza Strozzi 2) from 6 to 12 December and screen more than 40 films.

     
    A special selection of films from the festival will also be screened in Rome (13 and 14 December) and Milan (February 2015).

     
    Directed by Selvaggia Velo, the Festival is supported by the Indian Embassy and FIND – India/Europe Foundation for New Dialogues, with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage – Cinema Department, the Tuscan Region and Fondazione Sistema Toscana, Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze and OAC, and the India Tourism Office of Milan.

     

  • ‘Labour of love’, only Indian film at Abu Dhabi Film Festival

    ‘Labour of love’, only Indian film at Abu Dhabi Film Festival

    NEW DELHI: The Bengali-language film Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love), which had its premiere in the ongoing Mumbai Film Festival, is the only Indian film to be selected for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival this year.

    The film will be screened in the New Horizons section at the festival that screened Anup Singh’s Qissa last year.

    The film is about modern alienation in the crumbling suburbs of Kolkata, explored with lyricism and tenderness in times of great economic duress. A husband and wife share the same house and an intense love for each other. But since she works by day and he by night, they almost never meet.

    Aditya Vikram Sengupta was named the Best director of a debut film for Labour of Love in Venice Days, an independent sidebar of the Venice International Film Festival, where the film received its world premiere.

    The Abu Dhabi Film Festival will be held from 23 October to 1 November.

  • ‘Qissa’ to release in India on 26 September

    ‘Qissa’ to release in India on 26 September

    NEW DELHI: Anup Singh’s Qissa, which has already been released in Germany and shown in various film festivals including London and Durban, is to be released in India and Canada on 26 September.

     

    The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival almost exactly a year ago. The movie was released in Germany in July 2014 and was released earlier this week in France.

     

    The film is an official co-production between Heimat film (Germany), NFDC (India), Augustus Film (Netherlands) and Cine-sud Promotion (France) with Match Factory as the sales agent.

     

    A partition drama featuring Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal and Irrfan Khan, Qissa won the NETPAC award for Best Asian Film at Toronto International Film Festival 2013, The Dioraphte Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2014; and a Special Mention by the International Jury and Inalco Jury Award at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema this year.

     

    Set amidst the ethnic cleansing and general chaos that accompanied India’s partition in 1947, this sweeping drama stars Khan as a Sikh (Umber Singh) attempting to forge a new life for his family while keeping their true identities a secret from their community.

     

    It is here that the story takes a remarkable turn. Having already fathered daughters, Singh now wants a son. When his next child is born he celebrates his wish come true, but there is one problem: the baby is in fact a girl. As Umber’s daughter is raised as a boy, the characters are propelled with greater and greater urgency towards their inevitable fates.

     

    Qissa is originally an Arabic word meaning folk tale. Both the word and the idea migrated from the Gulf into the Punjab, still connected by the ancient oral narratives handed down in communal settings. Working within this tradition, director Anup Singh gives his film both the grand themes and elemental emotions of classic storytelling.

  • Three Indian films at Durban International Film Festival

    Three Indian films at Durban International Film Festival

    NEW DELHI: Ritesh Batra’s Lunchbox and Anup Singh’s Qissa, the two Indian films that have swept international film festivals over the past year, will be among the three Indian films at the 35th edition of the Durban International Film Festival.

     

    Jayan K. Cherian’s Papilio Buddha will be the third Indian film at the festival to be held from 17 to 27 July.

     

    A total of around 69 feature films, 60 documentaries and 57 short films will be screened.

     

    Qissa will be screened as part of a special package of films on Gender and Sexuality as it is a film that blurs the boundaries of gender and genre in its story of a girl who is brought up as a boy.

     

    The Lunchbox– a tale of an isolated housewife who tries to reignite her relationship with her husband through a friendship she forms with someone who receives her delicious meals – will be screened in World Cinema section.

     

    Also in the World Cinema section is Papilio Buddha, the story of a university-educated son of a Dalit activist who is politically apathetic until he receives bad treatment at the hands of the state.

     

    The film was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival early this year.