Posts Tagged ‘Devashish Makhija’

Busan International Film Festival 2018 will see 5 Indian films having their World Premieres in the section titled A Window on Asian Cinema.
The festival is being held from 4th to 13th October 2018.

Namdev Bhau In Search of Silence

Screenplay, Director: Dar Gai
Producer: Dheer Momaya
Starring: Namdev Gurav, Aarya Dave, Zoya Hussain
Running time: 84min

Bhonsle

Director: Devashish Makhija
Producer: Saurabh Gupta, Namita Lal, Piiyush Singh
Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Santosh Juvekar, Ipshita Chakraborty Singh, Virat Vaibhav
Running time: 128min

Widow of Silence

Director: Praveen Morchhale
Running time: 85min

Kaamyaab / Round Figure

Director: Hardik Mehta
Producer: Manish Mundra, Ridhima Lulla
Starring: Sanjai Mishra, Deepak Dobriyal, Sariika Singh, Isha Talwar, Kaurwakee Vasistha, Amitabh Shrivastava, Avtar Gill
Running time: 111min

Yours Truly

Story, Screenplay, Director: Sanjoy Nag
Producer: Platoon One Films, MDC Filmworks
Starring: Soni Razdan, Pankaj Tripathi
Running time: 78min

Devashish Makhija’s new film Ajji will have its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival’s (BIFF) ‘New Currents’ section. And with the fest line up unveiled, the makers have just released the first look of the film. Check out its poster and the trailer.

Here’s the official BIFF program note  on the film –

When society fails to provide justice for the rape of nine-year-old Manda, her ailing and arthritic grandmother Ajji tracks down the perpetrator, the son of a local politician, and plots a brutal revenge to serve as a deterrent to all men.

Cast

Sushma Deshpande, Sharvani Suryavanshi, Saadiya Siddique, Abhishek Banerjee, Vikas Kumar, Smita Tambe and Sudhir Pandey

The 104 min film has been written by Makhija and Mirat Trivedi. Interestingly, Saregama ventures back into filmmaking with their new brand – Yoodlee Films.

Its been a while since we have posted a new film in our Sunday Shorts segment. But this week, we got a new short by writer and filmmaker Devashish Makhija. This film has Manoj Bajpayee in the lead, and he is in terrific form here, even if it is just a glance here, and a reaction there. Music is by Nucleya. Watch it.

And if you didn’t get the film, the description on the youtube page dissects it all. Here you go..

TaandavHead constable Tambe isn’t having the best of days.

His wife slams doors in his face.

His little daughter won’t speak to him.

His only friends, havaldaars Sawant and Shilwant, feel cheated by him.

And to make matters worse, he’s been given nightlong Ganpati visarjan bandobast duty.

The lights are blinding.
The drums are deafening.
Explosions.
Clanging.
Flashing.
Thrashing.
His senses are being attacked from every which way.
Every screaming face seems to be mocking him tonight.

His blood…
slowly…
rises…
to a…
boil…
Until he snaps, plunges into the crowd, pulls his gun out, and as jaws drop around him…
he unleashes a TAANDAV!

 

Terribly Tiny Talkies by Chintan Ruparel and Anuj Gosalia is a creative initiative which brings together a diverse pool of writers to create one tweet-sized story, everyday. This time, they have gone ahead and produced 5 shorts. The theme is “love”.

5 shorts, under 5 minutes, by 5 filmmakers. El’ayichi by Devashish Makhija, R.I.P (Romance In Peace) by Shlok Sharma, The Last Day by Adhiraj Bose, Bunny by Vasan Bala, and Deuce by Chitan Ruparel. Do watch them and VOTE for your favourite one.

EL’AYICHI by Devashish Makhija, stars Nimrat Kaur, Divyendu Sharma, Vibha Chibber and Dodo! A dead but clingy husband and grieving but annoyed wife lock horns over what chai should be made today – adrak or ilayichi.

Shlok Sharma’s R.I.P (ROMANCE IN PEACE) features veterans Tom Alter and Shiv Subramaniam It’s never too late to find love!

Adhiraj Bose’s film THE LAST DAY stars Namit Das and Tahir Raj Bhasin. It’s a story of 2 roommates, on the night one of them is moving out after 8 years. What do they want to say to each other? Can they say it all?

Vasan Bala’s BUNNY has Sayani Gupta and Sunny Kaushal. A boy and a girl pop sleeping pills around a fireplace in a forest. You won’t believe what happened next!

Chintan Ruparel’s film DEUCE features Mandira Bedi and Rohan Shah. A never ending game about love, insecurities, and acceptance; told around an intense match of table tennis between a mother and a son. VOTE for your favourite short!

Most probably you haven’t heard about any of these titles mentioned in the header of the post. But they seem to be interesting films, and hopefully we will get to hear more about them in the coming months. So here’s the official synopsis of all these films.

DEKH TAMASHA DEKH

Away from any media attention, Feroze Abbas Khan has completed his next film titled Dekh Tamasha Dekh. He had earlier directed Gandhi, My Father.

Synopsis : The story revolves around the search for the religious identity of a poor man crushed under the weight of a politican’s hoarding. A social and political satire, the film explores the impossible India, where bizarre is normal.

Directed by Feroze Abbas Khan.
India 2012, 108 Minutes, Hindi with English subtitles.
Cast: Satish Kaushik, Tanvi Azmi, Vinay Jain, Sharad Ponkshe, Ganesh Yadav, Apoorva Arora, Alok Rajwade

CHENU

Manjeet Singh’s directorial debut Mumbai Cha Raja did a good round of film fests and now he is working on his next film titled Chenu. It has been selected for the 9th edition of L’Atelier organized by the Cinéfondation of the Cannes Film Festival.

Synopsis : Chenu, a low caste Dalit boy living in rural North India, is drawn into an ongoing war between the extremely violent leftist “Naxal” militia and the fascist landlords’ gang. One day his younger sister Chano’s fingers are chopped off by landlord Teer Singh for plucking mustard leaves from his farm. When Chenu’s family is denied justice, the Naxals come to their rescue. They huntdown Teer Singh forcing him to take refuge under the protection of Bhagwan Sing, the leader of a landlord gang who has just cremated a cart full of dead relatives killed by the Naxals. The Naxals then involve Chenu in their operations and he comes to know where their weapons are hidden. When physically beaten by the rich village kids for playing on their turf, Chenu learns to fire a handgun himself. Meanwhile Bhagwan Singh, in thirst of revenge, consolidates other landlord gangs to form a powerful private army. A bloody cycle of violence unleashes, engulfing Chenu’s innocence while setting him on the cours of his own journey.

OONGA

I have been hearing about Devashish Makhija for a long time. Good to know that he is ready with his debut feature.

Synopsis : Little Oonga missed his village school trip to the faraway big city Lohabad to see a play called ‘Ramayan’. Unable to handle the pressure of being the only kid around who has not seen the fantastic warrior-king ‘Rama’, Oonga runs away. He goes on a perilous journey across forest, river, mountains and roads – bigger than any he’s ever seen, and valleys lain to waste by the mining industry… until he reaches the large, cold, chaotic, blinding city. When he emerges from the play he believes he has become Rama! But he is now returning not to the warm confines of his little village, but to a battlefield where the ‘company’ will do anything to take the adivasi’s land away from them. Only, Oonga doesn’t know it yet.

Directed by Devashish Makhija.
India, 2012, Feature Film, 98 Minutes, Hindi and Oriya with English subtitles.
Cast – Alyy Khan, Anand Tiwari, Nandita Das, Priyanka Bose, Salim Kumar, Seema Biswas, Vipin Sharma

FILMISTAAN

Filmistaan22012 was a good year for Bollywood. But beating all those films, Nitin Kakkar’s debut feature Filmistaan bagged the National Award for the Best Feature Film in Hindi Language. And if you read the synopsis, you might know why. It sounds delicious.

Synopsis : This National Award winning movie is set in Mumbai where, affable Bollywood buff and wanna-be-actor Sunny, who works as an assistant director, fantasizes on becoming a heart-throb star. However, at every audition he is summarily thrown out. Undeterred, he goes with an American crew to remote areas in Rajasthan to work on a documentary. One day an Islamic terrorist group kidnaps him for the American crew-member. Sunny finds himself on enemy border amidst guns and pathani-clad guards, who decide to keep him hostage until they locate their original target. The house in which he is confined belongs to a Pakistani, whose trade stems from pirated Hindi films, which he brings back every time he crosses the border. Soon, the two factions realize that they share a human and cultural bond. The film shows how cinema can be the universal panacea for co-existence.

Directed by Nitin Kakkar.
India 2012, 117 Minutes, Hindi with English subtitles.
Cast – Sharib Hashmi, Kumud Mishra, Gopal Datt, Inaamulhaq

FIREFLIES

Synopsis : ‘Fireflies’ is the story of two estranged brothers – Shiv and Rana. Shiv, a successful banker, lives in the superficial glitter of corporate Bombay. The younger brother, Rana, is a law school dropout who lives by the day. Though worldly experiences and illusions briefly illuminate the brothers’ journeys, a tragedy that befell them fifteen years earlier seems destined to repeat itself, just in new incarnations. Flames suddenly extinguish again, in an eerie heartbeat. The journey ahead echoing with voices and visions from the past, and the magic realism of the years gone by, beckons the brothers to find each other again. And the picture in the puzzle that was scattered so long ago. Fireflies come out in the night, just to light up the darkness. They live as long as the glow lasts. Even if it is a lifetime, being lived in a day.

Directed by Sabal Singh Shekhawat.
India, 2012, 102 Minutes, Hindi & English.
Cast – Arjun Mathur, Monica Dogra, Rahul Khanna, Shivani Ghai, Aadya Bedi