City music composer a BAFTA Breakthrough India participant

Kolkata:

Music

director Alokananda Dasgupta is one of the 10 participants of the prestigious

BAFTA Breakthrough India

. This initiative showcases and supports the next generation of creative talents working in Indian films, games and television. It identifies individuals who have had a breakthrough year in the industry. Participants get

BAFTA

voting membership for a year, and free access to BAFTA events and international screenings.

The other selected candidates include director-writers

Ajitpal Singh

, Arati Kadav, Leena Manimekalai, Prateek Vats, game director Nakul Verma, cinematographer

Saumyananda Sahi

, writer Shubham, performer Sumukhi Suresh and producer Mathivanan Rajendran.

Having lost her father, filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta, last year, Alokananda has had a tough time grappling with the loss. This announcement comes as a “refreshing silver lining” in her life now. “I had lost my mother, Kuntala Dasgupta, in 2009. This news is the best thing to have happened to me in a long time. I wish I could share this news with my parents,” she said.

Alokananda was the first Indian composer to be selected for the prestigious

Berlinale Talents

– the Berlin International Film Festival’s talent development programme for the world’s top 200 emerging filmmakers and series creators. “I heard about BAFTA Breakthrough from my director-friend Shazia Iqbal who has made the short film ‘Bebak’. I applied in December and sent across samples of my work. We were selected by a jury which included

AR Rahman

, Apurva Asrani, Anupam Kher and Ratna Pathak Shah. This news comes at a time when I am dying to step out and work with good content and story-telling anywhere in the world,” she said.

Alokananda doesn’t believe in sticking to a certain region, genre or culture and wants to “branch out”. According to her, the world is getting smaller but the barriers seem to be only getting stronger. “I have always wanted my kind of compositional work to be less hierarchical and more collaborative. In this present dystopian, war-torn reality, this initiative seems to be bridging the gaps between countries and borders and focusing just on talents and allowing them to further their careers,” she said.

The composer of ‘

Sacred Games

’, ‘Ajeeb Daastaans’, ‘Leila’, ‘AK Vs AK’, ‘Tope’, ‘Urojahaj’ and ‘Trapped’ is inspired by the content and shows generated from the UK. “At present, the initiative will be conducted virtually. I am hoping to attend physical interactive sessions once everything opens up. I would consider it an honor and my playground to musically explore and experiment further if I get an opportunity to work on such projects. This initiative, supported by Netflix, will allow me to do that,” she said.