11 directors with one lucky actress
Anurag Kashyap, Sudhir Mishra, Shashank Ghosh, Ayush Raina, Jahnu Barua, Ruchi Narain, Manish Jha, Kundan Shah, Revathy, Rahul Dholakia and Rituparno Ghosh — these 11 directors from Bollywood will be sharing the same platform on April 27 for the world premiere of their joint venture. The film, Mumbai Cutting… A City Unfolds premieres the IFFLA (Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles) at Arclights, Hollywood.
“All the directors have portrayed the myriad flavours of the city in 10-minute story capsules. It is extremely challenging to tell a story in the span of 10 minutes that too in a film format, but the directors have simply outdone themselves,” said the CEO of White Cloud Production Niyati Shah.
Arclights Theatre will witness the rare combination of two highly competitive directors — Rituparno, who gives his view on the seductive pull of Mumbai and Jahnu, who explores the effect of the city on a stranger. Not to be left behind, good friends Anurag and Sudhir will be sharing space for once not being able out do each other! Adding variety to this get together, will be debutant directors Ayush and Shashank. Shashank’s viewpoint in Mumbai Cutting portrays the “life of a Mumbaikar but also of refugees like me, who’ve left their homeland and found a new home here”. Ruchi feels Mumbai Cutting will give an out-of-the-box experience to the viewer.
The up close and personal approach of Revathy finds the fact interesting that “this film has a thread called Mumbai that is running throughout. I’ve shown a facet of Mumbai where human rights are taken for granted by the victims of injustice and where sexual favours are just a way of life and not an eye-raising issue.”
For Manish, the whole idea of making a film on Mumbai is what got him excited that too with directors of such high caliber. And the highlight is that veteran director Kundan brings with him his enviable sarcasm and black comedy style in the film. Festival director Christina Marouda of IFFLA says, “To close with a unique project such as Mumbai Cutting …A City Unfolds, simply underscores our dedication to provide a platform for films that we feel deserve to be seen by audiences in Los Angeles as well as throughout the US.”