Bengali film on lockdown life to compete in Busan film fest

Kolkata: The first feature film that is being produced by

Aurora Film Corporation

after 45 years has been selected for the main competition of the 26th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF). ‘House of Time’ (‘

Kalkokkho

’), co-directed by National Award-winning SRFTI alumni Rajdeep Paul and Sarmistha Maiti, explores the tension between social isolation and the longing for belonging, which is part of the

pandemic

existence. The physical edition of

BIFF

will be held between October 6 and 15.

The Bengali film is one of the 11 selected works in the New Currents section. It is a main competition section at BIFF and has become an entry point for capable directors over the past 25 years in the discovery of new Asian films. It is nominated for the New Currents Awards, the New Currents Audience Award, the NETPAC award and the FIPRESCI Award. The other Indian film that is competing in this section is titled ‘Pedro’.

According to Anjan Bose, the managing director of the 115-year-old Aurora Film Corporation, this selection will give a boost to young filmmakers trying to “find a new language in Bengali cinema”. “Through mythological allegory and spiritual subtext, I’m glad these two youngsters made a film that explored themes like reality and illusion, instinct and morality, love, loneliness and grief in the times of pandemic,” Bose said.

‘Kalkokkho’, starring Tannistha Biswas, Sreelekha Mukherji, Janardan Ghosh, Amit Saha, Ahana Karmakar and Deep Sarkar, traces what happens when a doctor is locked in a house inhabited by three women from different age groups during the pandemic. So, there is a paranoid young woman, an old lady suffering from amnesia and a lonely girl. Dialogues highlight various facets of the pandemic, including the angst of migrant workers and why they walked miles to return home, the pangs of families of frontline workers distanced from home and the plight of poor children who have no access to online education.

Sarmistha Maiti and Rajdeep Paul
According to Paul, the concept of social isolation is alien for senior citizens. “In the beginning of the

lockdown

, everyone was panic-stricken. Viral videos of ill-equipped hospitals played in our mind and many of us had a feeling that our lives would be safer if we had a doctor at home,” he said. That became the genesis of their script. “The doctor became a metaphor in our film for our urge to cling on to a saviour,” he added.

During the lockdown, Maiti realized that unlike movies, apocalypse in real life is “boring” and resembles a “slow-paced art film”. “On top of that is the paranoia. The life of my seven-year-old daughter got locked during the lockdown. The physical presence of her friend circle disappeared and everything became virtual for her. While writing the script, I wanted to weave in this perspective,” she said.

Maiti and Paul are double-vaccinated and are awaiting the clearance of Korean norms before they can finalise if physical visit to the festival will support their logistics.