F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b

NFDC India has selected six projects for the 10th Edition of NFDC Film Bazaar Screenwriters’ Lab.

The Screenwriters’ Lab is part of NFDC Labs’ ongoing initiative to develop original voices and stories from India. The selected participants work with mentors to explore their stories in one-on-one as well as group sessions and master classes. Aimed at domestic as well as international markets, the projects will be pitched to producers and investors in a specially designed session during Film Bazaar 2016. Like the last two years, this edition of the lab will continue its collaboration with Sarajevo International Film Festival.

– The selected projects include scripts in various regional languages, a Tamil script, Heart and Soul; two Malayalam scripts – Spirogyra and The Ward; a Bengali script, The Gift; a Punjabi script, Unresolved; and Hindi script, Time To Go.

Details of the scripts and writers –

1.  Heart and Soul (Tamil)

Hari Hara Sudhan is a Direction & Screenwriting student of Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute. Before joining film school, Hari trained under Balu Mahendra in Chennai.

2.  Spirogyra (Malayalam)

Abhilash Vijayan is an emerging filmmaker whose short film Dwand (The Dual) and short documentary That Elephant From the Bridge have won several national and international awards, apart from travelling to several international festivals. Abhilash holds a post-graduate Diploma in Direction and Screenplay Writing from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.

3.  The Gift (Bengali)

Tamal Sen studied Direction and Screenplay writing from the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, Kolkata. His graduation film, Still Voices won the Special Prize at the 58th Columbus International Film & Video Festival USA, and won an Honourable Mention at the Los Angeles Reel Film Festival 2010, among many others.

4.  The Ward (Malayalam)

Kris Rajan has worked as an editor on two-time academy award nominee John Sayles’ latest feature, Go For Sisters. His short films have screened at numerous international film festivals. Kris has been a researcher, writer, and editor on numerous commissioned and independent feature documentaries. He studied Film Directing at New York University’s Film program, where he was awarded the sole “Technisphere Award” for outstanding creative achievement.

5.  Time To Go (Hindi)

Mansi Jain is a writer – director who has recently co-written and associate directed Moh Maya Money, a crime drama. Her short film Lunch Lady was in official selection at many major film festivals. 42nd and Bombay, her short film screenplay, was awarded the prestigious $10,000 grant by Panavision at Columbia University Film Festival 2015. Mansi has also assisted Rajat Kapoor on Ankhon Dekhi (Before My Eyes, 2013). Currently she is a thesis year MFA screenwriting-directing candidate at Columbia University.

6.  Unresolved (Punjabi)

Vikram Singh is a writer – director who has recently written and director a comedy feature for children.He has worked with India’s largest advertising agencies, producing and directing commercials for some of India’s biggest brands. In 2001 Vikram moved to Mumbai and joined UTV in their ADs division as a director of commercials and corporate videos. Since then he has written several scripts on spec.

The mentors of the script labs are…

1. Antoine Le Bos

Antoine Le Bos is a French screenwriter and script-consultant, with more than 25 feature scripts delivered under contract as a writer or co-writer, and the experience of over a hundred feature projects followed as a consultant. He has worked as a consultant for the Moulin d’Andé (CECI, France), tutoring their 2005, 2006 and 2007 rewriting sessions, as well as European Short Pitch 2007 to 2010 sessions, and taught screenwriting at Brest University. He won the Gan Foundation Prize as a writer in 2005 for a feature film project called La Vague Noire.

Antoine has been a tutor and consultant for Script&Pitch Workshops and Torino Film Lab since 2007, as well as for Interchange in 2009, 2010, 2011. In 2007, Antoine Le Bos became Artistic Director of Le Groupe Ouest, European centre for film creation in Brittany (France), and recently co-created the Cross-Channel Film Lab between France and Great Britain.

2. Urmi Juvekar

Urmi Juvekar was actively involved in theatre since her early years. She then moved on to working in a television production house to make non-fiction programmes while writing her first feature film, Darmiyaan, which released in 1998. Since then, she has written seven films including Oye Lucky, Lucky Oyeand I AM – both winners of the National Award for Best Film – and has made three documentaries, of which Shillong Chamber Choir and the Little Home School was shown in IDFA, Amsterdam in 2008.

After working as a creative producer with the critically acclaimed and commercially successful film, Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Urmi adapted the famous Greek novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos for her next film, Shanghai. Her latest film is Detective Byomkesh Bakshi. An alumnus of the Binger Film Lab, Urmi has also been involved with NFDC since 2011 as a consultant for Film Bazaar and script labs.

3. Romain Compingt

Romain Compingt is the youngest graduate of CEEA – the Conservatoire Européen d’écriture Audiovisuelle, where he is now a teacher. Populaire(directed by Régis Roinsard), his first feature film as screenwriter, has been released worldwide and has been nominated for five César awards.

Romain has co-written Divines, directed by Houda Benyamina, which won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 2016. Known for bringing sensibility to a wide range of characters and for his strength in structure, Romain has also worked as a script doctor in the film La Fille De Brest, by Emmanuelle Bercot, which is set for release at the end of 2016.