16^th Third Eye Asian Film Festival: X

Besides features and docu-features, the 16th Third Eye Asian Film Festival (TEAFF) had a competitive section for shorts. As many as 25 films competed. Countries represented included India, Iran, Myanmar, Turkey, Tajikistan and South Korea. They were packaged into two screening slots, one of which I managed to attend.

Audience Award, Short Film: Taghdir (Fate)/Iran/13 min/Azar Faramarzi

Actress, producer and director Azar Faramarzi graduated in Film and TV direction from Symbiosis International University in India (in 2012) and has also been acting in television and films for ten years. Since 2010, Azar has completed four short films; two documentaries and two fictional films. Moreover, she has twice served on the Jury of TEAFF. Destiny is about a fish-breeding worker who loses his wife and son-they drown in the river. “It made the local news and actually that river in the north of Iran has killed so many people because it is very wide and cold. Even people who were good at swimming ended up getting killed there. I also wanted to say that nature can be a very dangerous thing and that people should be careful even if there is a beauty they still have to be careful.”

She has said about this film, “Destiny I really like because it was a total real story, and I went to the exact location and I wanted to shoot that story.” Incidentally, Destiny, was entered and accepted at the last Berlin International Film Festival, where it was ‘vetoed’ by Iran, after the authorities there withdrew all the films entered for the Berlinale, because of the issue of the ‘illegal videos’. A suitcase, containing 60 videos of films, from emerging Iranian directors, and carried by Anke Leweke, the Iranian programmer for the Berlinale, was intercepted at Tehran airport, then confiscated. As a result, Iran had no films represented at this year’s Berlinale.

Jury Special Award: Aaba/India/21 min/Amar Kaushik

Amar Kaushik ventures deep into the mysterious north-east of India, the state of Arunachal Pradesh, where the Apatani, or Tanw, also known by Apa and Apa Tani, are a tribal group of people living in the Ziro valley in the Lower Subansiri district. Their language, Apatani, is hardly known outside their habitat.

Aaba was the only Indian film in competition at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival.

Director Kaushik spent months with the Apatanis, till he almost became a part of them

Aaba is Amar Kaushik’s directorial debut, but he was the associate director of No One Killed Jessica. For his first film, he went back to the region where he had spent his childhood. Aaba was a story his mother had narrated to him as a child, and it stayed with him till now. And guess who came on board as a producer? The writer-director of No One Killed Jessica, his mentor, Rajkumar Gupta. Soon he had Onir, Mitul Dikshit and Alison Welly backing him too.

As Berlin, Aaba bagged a prestigious award: the Special Prize of the Generation K Plus International Jury for the Best Short Film of the Year! The story revolves around an orphan girl who comes across the news of her grandfather reaching the terminal stage of lung cancer. As the grandfather (Aaba) starts counting his days, the family’s life takes some unexpected turns. The cast comprises state locals.

Best Short Film Award: Birthday Night/Iran/23 min/Omid Shams

Ahmad and Ali are friends and job partners. They face dramatic situation on their birthday night. On their birthday night, they are on their way from a job outside the city to Ahmad's house where their wives are waiting for them. But on the road, an incident causes them to learn more about each other.

Omid is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Portsmouth, school of law, through a bursary scheme led by Business School in cooperation with Amnesty International. His current project is on the indirect mechanisms of censorship in Iran. He holds a master in American Studies from the University of Turin.

He has been working as a writer and human rights activist since 2002. In 2014, after experiencing threats and persecutions from the authorities in Iran as a result of his writings and engagement in the human rights activism, he fled his home country for Denmark under the ICORN’s protection program for writers at risk. He is an honorary member of Danish PEN. Shams’s last film was The Passer, 2016. Birthday Night received the best screenplay award, with 70mn rial (170 USD), at the 34th Tehran International Short Film Festival for his fiction film, Birthday Night.

Audience Award (Feature Film): Nawara/Egypt/106 min/Hala Khalil (pictured above)

Hala Khalil’s mirroring of the realities of modern-day Egyptian life and the turbulence of 2011 that would affect a lower-middle class maid’s simple life and craw her into a net of political cat and mouse games. I had reviewed the film two weeks ago. Here is the brief review again.

“Woman film-maker Hala Khalil strikes all the right chords with a riveting screenplay in Nawara (2015), placed in the post Tahrir Square 2011 revolution in Egypt, during the last days of the Hosni Mubaarak regime. Add to that the fact that it is Khalil’s feature debut, and you know what any capable woman can achieve in cinema. Helping Khalil spin her narrative web is a creditable cast, led by a powerhouse called Menna Shalabi. Khalil was inspired by the slogan of the revolution, ‘Bread, Freedom, Social Justice’, but was also disappointed that the slogan largely remained just that.

Nawara works as a domestic helper at a villa whose owners are closely linked to the Mubarak regime. She is married, but the couple do not have a place of their own, so they are forced to live separately. As the revolution unfolds, Nawara’s employers escape, asking her to look after the house in their absence. Her Madam leaves her a large sum of money, to help her move into a house with her husband, and to pay for the medical expenses of her critically ill father-in-law. When a travel ban and property seizure orders are issued against the family, the police arrive at the villa, and confiscate Nawara's money, believing it to be part of her employers’ ill-gotten wealth. Sensitive stuff that holds interest all through the 122 minutes it lasts.”

Rating: *** ½

Deserving honourable mention:

Save Me/Iran/10 minutes/Mohsen Nabavi

Brilliant interpretation of ecological disasters, with ‘wow’ ending, and

Safar/India/15 min/Sreejoni Nag

Watch late Tom Alter, after his thumb removal, and a short while before skin cancer got him, pair-up with fellow alumnus Reeta Bhaduri as husband and wife, exchange loving banter. That itself suffices to moisten your eyes, and then, at the end, there is a large lump in my throat. Perhaps I felt more moved because Tom was dear to me, and I know Reeta well too.

Undeserving of any mention: Manto Ki Shaadi/India/14 min