Nandita Das and filmmaker Sudhir Mishra were recently seen rocking to the songs of Jasbir Jassi, especially his hit number Kudi Gujarat Di. Also in the audience, were filmmakers like Hansal Mehta and Honey Trehan.
They were in Chandigarh for the second edition of Cinévesture International Film Festival (CIFF), founded by Nina Lath Gupta, who was also the force behind the establishment of the Film Bazaar, the first film market in India, now held annually in Goa as a parallel event to the International Film Festival of India.
Das was at CIFF to talk to potential investors about her next project. Avi & Smi, her fourth film as a director, is about a couple who revisit their 16-year-old marriage, after a separation of six months.
The four-day film festival was packed with so many other new projects, like Radhika Apte's first directorial effort Koyta, with Vikramaditya Motwane as the producer, Venkatesh Maha's Ko Ko Ko, Jeo Baby's Punishment and Shonali Bose's Black Mountain Monpa.
Since CIFF was held in Punjab, there were also a couple of projects based in that state: Trehan's The Blade Runner, which will be produced by Abhishek Chaubey and Ajitpal Singh's next feature Marx and Lenin, with publicist Mauli Singh attached as the producer.
"I look at every film as a startup," Gupta said, adding that she launched CIFF as a network for potential investors in films.
"You can decide to invest in five films and spread your risks in all of them. But at the end of the day, they are all startups. It's not an easy business to be in. But if you do a risk mitigation strategy by curating projects, with filmmakers who have a box office story to tell in terms of successes, then it becomes easier for an investor to come into an industry that is considered to be very opaque."
By the mood and the programming of the festival, Gupta has brought a gift to the people of Chandigarh, which is also her hometown.
The sessions and conversations were attended by local actors and film personalities, including a packed one with Ammy Virk of Bad Newz fame. The session was so popular that even a number of Sikh policemen listened in to the singer-actor.
"There's an entire industry outside of Chandigarh in Mohali, with producers like Gunbir Sidhu who has made the Jatt and Juliet series," Gupta said. "In how many industries do you see pop stars turn into superstars in acting? They have two parallel careers. They continue singing while acting in films."
The big part of the gift to the people of Chandigarh was the main film festival that ran parallel to the panels and industry market sessions. Curated by Festival Director V S Kundu, former director general of Films Division, and artistic director Bina Paul, who has also headed the programing operations of the Dharamsala International Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Kerala, the CIFF included several successful films that have played internationally (A Normal Family, Dahomey, Little Jaffna) and new Indian cinema (Dibakar Banerjee's Tees, which was initially intended to stream on Netflix until the platform walked away from the film and Tigmanshu Dhulia's Ghamasaan).
There were conversations with actors like Rasika Dugal, Shweta Tripathi, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Shashank Arora, Nandita Das and the the newest acting talent from the Kapoor clan, Zahan Kapoor.
On the last day of the festival, Boman Irani ran a packed scriptwriting masterclass. For over two hours, Irani stood on his feet and kept his audience riveted as he talked about the key elements of writing a script.
Since the start of the pandemic, Irani has been conducting online script-writing workshops attended by hundreds of people around the world.
His workshops are always free and it is his way to give back to his young fans and audience.
"It's good for my soul," Irani said.
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