Film Cycle: India – Bangladesh Selection from AFFBCN 2018
From the 20th of April to the 15th of June of 2019
This selection of movies from India and Bangladesh (2016-2018) explores the quotidian life of humans and environments in which life lessons constitute for the drama experience. The images are particularly explicit which narrate and whose cultural identity of the models are referred to. Uniting India and Bangladesh in the same program has the advantage of being able to associate narratives although not identical, are similar in many aspects culturally. Bangladesh, a country created in 1971 after the dramatic partition from India with Pakistan to the north, east and west, divided by Indian territory until the creation of a Bangladeshi state and nation. With a total of 8 films screened in the Asian Film Festival Barcelona 2018, this program sets out the possibility to recover for all kinds of audiences the narratives that commercial cinema usually cannot male available. Works that already are classics like “Lipstick Under My Burkha” (India, 2018) or “No Bed of Roses” (Bangladesh, 2017) are the basis to later go in depth into exploring stories that cinema knows how to narrate with the intensity that the experiences demand of the protagonists. The cruelty of those who possess some kind of power, the defenselessness of the victims and impossibility to respond to situation and the humiliating and undeserving circumstances of humans are what converts these movies into the incomparable testimonies of a group or community’s life. In most of the cases, it is the social structure which consume the inferior that have no right to talk. The fight for survival and equality, women’s empowerment, couple’s crisis, social prejudices, despair and death lend a hand in the various occasions that are represented on screen bringing us closer to the figures which we finally identify ourselves with.
PROGRAMMING
Saturday 20th of April of 2019, 20h
LIPSTICK UNDER MY BURKHA, Dir. Alankrita Shrivastava | India | 2016 | 117 min | OVSTSP
Set in the crowded streets of a small Indian city, a college girl wearing a burkha fights against the cultural identity problems, aiming to become a pop star. A young beautician tries to escape from her small town’s claustrophobia. An oppressed housekeeper and mother of three child lives the alternative life of an entrepreneur seller. And a 55 year old widow rediscovers her sexuality through a telephonic romance. Trapped in their worlds, all of them claim their desires by performing secret acts of rebellion that take place in this coral movie.
Saturday 27th of April of 2019, 20h
NO BED OF ROSES, Dir. Mostofa Sarwar Farooki | Bangladesh | 2017 | 86 min | OVSTSP
The famous cinema director Javed Hasan goes through the middle age crisis wondering if marriage and his career have demanded him too much. A date with Nitu, a childhood friend of his daughter, makes the rest. The protagonist lets himself be seduced by her and what comes next becomes a national scandal. Javed’s family cannot avoid disgrace. Finally he gets divorced from his wife Maya and ends separated from his daughter Saberi and his son Ahir. Javed and Nitu get married, but the new union is not a bed of roses since they must face the Bangladeshi social prejudices. Time before, Saberi and Nitu were close friends but, because of the public humiliation, their friendship weakens. In addition, Saberi realizes that Nitu has always competed against her since her childhood. Now she must get closer to her mother and encourage her to discover the positive things of being single. In the middle of despair they give support to each other.
Saturday 4th of May of 2019, 20h
AJJI, Dir. Devashish Makhija | India | 2017 | 144 min | OVSTSP
Little Manda gets rapped and left on the top of a pile of garbage in her neighborhood. Her parents are more worried about her survival rather than her dignity; they prefer to forget that she has been rapped and to move on. The police feel powerless because the rapist is the son of a local politician. But Manda’s grandmother, Ajji, refuses to accept such an injustice. Can a fragile, arthritic and impotent elder woman deal with the bad wolf? Is there any hope of making justice in this cruel world? How to dissuade a rapist? “Ajji” is a parable of our times. There are no easy answers.
Saturday 11th of May of 2019, 20h
KUCHH BHEEGE ALFAAZ, Dir. Onir | India | 2017 | 116 min | OVSTSP
Every night at 22h, Kolkata tunes in the radio to listen ‘Kuchh Bheege Alfaaz’, a series of chapters of unrequited love stories introduced by RJ Alfaaz who, despite of having many followers, prefers to keep distant and anonymous. Among his many fans there is Archana, a girl who works in a creative agency developing memes for trademarks. She is leucodhermic but still she lives life to the maximum. They meet; better said they speak for the first time through a lost phone call, when Archana accidentally dials Alfaaz’s number while she tries to contact her last blind date. A friendship blooms between the two strangers who hide behind their screens and it does not take too much time for the volcano to explode when they know exactly what they are.
Saturday 18th of May of 2019, 20h
KALER PUTUL, Dir. Aka Reza Ghalib | Bangladesh | 2017 | 125 min | OVSTSP
Ten apparently unknown people arrive to a remote village. Instead of being welcomed by the host during breakfast, the group finds a strange message in which they are all accused of being murderers. Some of the guests seem to recognize the premise since it is similar to a very famous mystery novel’s plot. Believing it is a joke, the group decides to abandon. But the only way to leave the complex has been destroyed. Panic, suspicion and accusations take over all of them. Look into the past of every guest does not help at all. Neither the similarity with the novel’s plot since the real events do not seem to follow the sequence of the fiction. Will someone survive or will it end like the original narration: with no survivors?
Saturday 25th of May of 2019, 20h
NOBLEMEN, Dir. Vandana Kataria | India | 2018 | 108 min | OVSTCAT
It is winter in a prestigious boarding school for young people, where kids still perform rituals and hierarchic codes. Shay is constantly attacked. Shay and Pia, the impulsive daughter of the new principal of Junior School are chosen Bassanio and Portia in the production of the Venice’s Marchant’s Founder’s. Murali, the charismatic theatre teacher, with no bad intention, puts Baadal as Shay’s understudy. Angry, Baadal swears to obtain Shay’s role at any cost and addresses to his friends Arjun looking for help. Events will make a sinister twist.
Saturday 8th of June of 2019, 20h
SIDE A & SIDE B, Dir. Rahat Kazmi | India | 2018 | 115 min | OVSTCAT
A comedy about Kashmir? Probably not. Well, not entirely. The last movie of the director and co-writer Rahat Kazmi is a fascinating, captivating and moving drama about growing up in a conflict zone. Between bombs and bullets, a group of university friends are trying to take maxim profit to their lives but they need a break… Just like anyone would in their situation. Starting from a group of four intrepid friends (following the style of the Inbetweeners), who are bound by the love for cinema, they buy VHS Bollywood movies, but when the prohibition of TV and many movies appears (just like happened in 1994) the four friends do not give up. What happens then turns to be funny, totally credible and very entertaining. It ends, maybe, in more tense circumstances. But, as Kazmi said in the Mantostaan presentation during last year’s festival “It is a beautiful place with intelligent, cultured and polite people. They deserve the best. And this movie is a love letter to the people of Kashmir”.
Saturday 15th of June of 2019, 20h
KIA & COSMOS, Dir. Sudipto Roy | India | 2018 | 123 min | OVSTSP
Kia is an autistic 15 years old girl who lives with her mother Diya in the south of Calcutta, her father died some years ago because of a heart attack. One day, Cosmos, a cat from the neighborhood, dies suddenly, which awakens Kia’s curiosity to discover the reason why. During an investigation at his own house, she finds many letters from her father in which there is his name written. Diya had concealed the truth to her daughter during all these years and her father is alive, for that she decides to start looking for him and to solve the mystery of his disappearance. Why did her father leave them? Will she find him?
Film cycle: From the 20th of April to the 15th of June of 2019
Cinemes Girona · C/ Girona, 175, 08025 Barcelona
Ticket price: 3.5 € | Cinemes Girona’s subscribers and partners ticket price: 2 €
*OVSTCAT| Original Version Subtitled in Catalan – OVSTSP | Original Version Subtitled in Spanish
