49th International Film Festival of India 2018-Directors of Indian Panorama feature films share hardships in film making

Two national film award winners who addressed the media in connection with 49^th International Film Festival of India had a lot to say on this topic. ‘Sinjar’ and ‘Nagarkirtan’ are two movies that came to IFFI with the glory of national film award. When Pampally, Director of ‘Sinjar’ and Riddhi Sen, lead actor of ‘Nagarkirtan’ poured their hearts out about their hard-made films, it became another proclamation about the power of true content. Pampally, who bagged the award for the Best Debut Director at the 65th National Film Awards, said that his story shows how international terrorism affects the life of an ordinary fisherman in Lakshadweep. “When terrorist attacks and conflicts happen around the world, we never thought how such incidents affect ordinary, uneducated people. This film tries to portray the hardships of such people”, he said. The distant location of Kavaratti Islands, the limited transportation facilities to mainland and the need for sanctions due to it being a union territory posed much difficulty in the production process, he added. He also explained the challenges he faced while doing a film in the local dialect of Jasari which lacks any script or grammar. “The script was first written in Malayalam and with the help of local youth, it was converted to the local spoken language. The actors were also given some training for pronouncing this dialect. These exercises turned it into a Himalayan task”, said Pampally. National Film award winner for Best Actor, Riddhi Sen said that playing the character of a transgender in ‘Nagarkirtan’ was a life changing experience for him. “The movie is about a transgender person who has a woman trapped inside a man’s body. The transformational part from a man to a transgender individual was very difficult. The hardest thing was to capture the physicality of a woman and to maintain the fine line”, he said. The film is a small effort to plunge into the darkness and help those people who are not accepted the way they are. He expressed hope that this film will change the attitude of at least one percent of society towards the third gender. Recalling the constraints faced by Director Kaushik Ganguly in making the movie, Riddhi Sen said that people in India continue to be afraid to produce a movie on third gender. The director approached many producers and finally Acropolis Films agreed to produce it. Riddhi Sen also dedicated the film to those transgender people in our country who are struggling every day, stuck in identity crisis. He further added that the success of the film is a tribute to the struggles of the transgender community.