5 Film festival favourites

Haramkhor

Shweta Tripathi seems to be making a quietly powerful Bollywood beginning. Haramkhor, her second critically-acclaimed indie, opened the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles Film Festival this April, and won her a best actress award. The film also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who plays a school teacher engaged in an illicit affair with one of his students. First-time director Shlok Sharma, another Anurag Kashyap protégé to watch out for, is not one for needless deliberation – he wrote the movie's script in three days and shot it in 19.

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Umrika 

An unusual spin on the immigrant experience, Prashant Nair’s sophomore feature was a standout entry at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, winning the Audience Award. The story begins with young Udai (Prateik Babbar) leaving behind his village for a taste of the American Dream, later sending his family regular missives chronicling his journey. Udai’s colourful letters are devoured by the entire community, until his younger brother (Life Of Pi’s Suraj Sharma) discovers they were forged by his father and the postman, and embarks on a search mission accompanied by his best friend Lalu (the adorable Tony Revolori from The Grand Budapest Hotel).

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Dhanak

Nagesh Kukunoor’s second sibling drama after Iqbal tells the story of Pari, a young girl from rural Rajasthan determined to cure her little brother’s blindness before his ninth birthday. She soon chances upon a flyer carrying Shah Rukh Khan’s plea for eye donations – a prod in the right direction from the heavens, she’s sure – and leads her young ward through the shifting dunes of Rajasthan to win some help from King Khan. How endearing is this sibling dynamic? Enough to win two awards at the 65^th Berlin Film Festival. 

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Placebo

Abhay Kumar’s Placebo has become a familiar sight at documentary festivals (premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam); it also joined other homegrown narratives in the special ‘Made In India’ line-up at the Hot Docs Festival (Toronto) held earlier this year. Kumar filmed most of the "investigative experiment" at a reputable med school, where he documented the lives of four medical aspirants coping with the pressures of their field. Placebo, inspired by an incident of self-inflicted violence Kumar witnessed, uses a mix of guerilla footage and cleverly animated sequences to make a strong case for med-school reassessment. 

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Masaan

Neeraj Ghaywan’s hard-hitting debut won an overwhelming 5-minute-long standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and bagged two prizes – the prestigious Fipresci award (judged by the International Federation of Film Critics) and the Promising Future award. The webbed love story set in Benaras stars Richa Chadda (Gangs Of Wasseypur), and new indie faces Shweta Tripathi and Vicky Kaushal (hottie alert!), all coping with the consequences of caste wars, sex scandals and ambiguous moralities. The flood of glowing reviews for the movie is only making the wait for its July 24th release seem like an eternity.

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