Entertainment
Uncommon tales of courage
A boxing champ, a spirited woman with cerebral palsy and tenacious acid attack victims — strong women dominate the Indian stories bound for TIFF
Saibal Chatterjee

AN interesting mix of films from India is heading to the 39th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which runs from September 4 to 14.

Five Indian titles will have their world premieres at TIFF. They reflect the subcontinent’s cinematic diversity.

At one end of the spectrum is a big Bollywood biopic, at the other an independent Tamil-language first feature directed by a maverick cinematographer. Also in TIFF’s Indian selection is a short film about the fight of acid attack victims to reclaim their life and dignity.

This eight-minute film, Newborns, has been helmed by Mumbai-based director-screenwriter Megha Ramaswamy and produced by Anand Gandhi and Sohum Shah’s Recyclewala Labs.

Newborns is one of 36 short films from 29 countries that have been selected for TIFF’s inaugural ‘Short Cuts International’ sidebar. Hitherto the festival only had Short Cuts Canada.

Production designer-turned-director Omung Kumar’s Mary Kom, starring Priyanka Chopra in the titular role, will premiere on the opening day of TIFF, hours ahead of its worldwide commercial release on September 5.

Produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Mary Kom is a dramatisation of the story of the gutsy Manipuri boxer’s rise to the top in her challenging sporting discipline.

Among the most keenly anticipated Indian titles in TIFF 2014 is Shonali Bose’s second feature, Margarita, With a Straw. To be screened in the festival’s Contemporary World Cinema section, the film, featuring Kalki Koechlin and Revathi, is a deeply personal take on the inspirational efforts of a girl with cerebral palsy to beat her disability.

This will be the second appearance in Toronto for both Shonali Bose and Kalki Koechlin. The latter was last seen in TIFF when Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots was screened here in 2010. Bose’s debut film, Amu, was premiered in the festival in 2005.

Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi will get his first taste of TIFF when he travels to Toronto with Tigers, a hard-hitting narrative film by Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic.

Hashmi stars in the film as a Pakistani medical salesman, who challenges the system when he discovers the dangerous effects of the baby formula that he peddles in his country for a multi-national pharmaceutical company.

Hashmi, star of films like Murder and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, had a key role in Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai, which was included in the City to City Mumbai package unveiled here in 2012. But the actor wasn’t part of the Indian entourage that travelled to Toronto that year.

Tigers, which is an Indo-French-British co-production, has several other Indian actors in the cast, including Geetanjali Thapa, Adil Hussain, Vinod Nagpal and Supriya Pathak.

M. Manikandan’s Kaakkaa Muttai (The Crow’s Egg), is an unconventional Tamil entertainer produced by the lead actor (Dhanush) and director (Vetrimaran) of the acclaimed 2011 drama (Aadukalam), which won half a dozen prizes at India’s National Awards, including the big ones for acting and directing.

The Crow’s Egg, which is part of TIFF’s Discovery section, revolves around the adventures of a couple of feisty slum boys who, after losing their playground to a new pizza parlour, are desperate to taste a pizza for themselves. But there is a small matter that gets in their way: one pizza costs more than what their family makes in an entire month. So the two boys have no option but to devise ways to make more money.

The Crow’s Egg is the third Tamil film to make the TIFF cut after Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamittal (A Peck on the Cheek, 2002) and Azhagarsamiyin Kudhirai (Azhagarsami’s Horse, 2011).

Another Indian director in TIFF this year is the experimental film artist Shambhavi Kaul. Her latest short film, Night Noon, is part of the festival’s Wavelengths programme.

Night Noon, a US-Mexico co-production, is Kaul’s third film in a row in Toronto. Her Chitrakoot 21 and Mount Song, both nine-minute films, were in the same TIFF section in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

India, its rain-drenched months to be precise, is the subject of Reykjavik-born Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson’s Monsoon, a nearly two-hour documentary on a weather system that has a profound impact on the life, culture and economy of the vast subcontinent.

The festival catalogue describes Monsoon as "part road movie, part spectacle, part drama" and a "meditation on chaos, creation and faith in the land of believers".

An Indian-origin character, a Sikh driving instructor played by Ben Kingsley, is a key part of the plot of Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s English-language film, Learning to Drive. The film, set in New York City, tells the story of two dissimilar individuals with their own sets of personal problems seeking to connect with each other in the course of the biweekly driving lessons that a recently separated writer and book editor (Patricia Clarkson) takes in a bid to divert her mind from the mess in her life.

“I am not a rebel” Kalki Koechlin may not be like the audacious characters she portrays in films such as Dev D. She feels actors are like chameleons, who get into the skin of the character the moment camera focuses on them Nonika Singh Kalki Koechlin. Tribune photo: Pradeep Tewari She is way prettier than what she looks on screen. Endowed with luminous brown eyes and a flawless complexion, Kalki Koechlin is not only unlike the quirky characters she has played but markedly different from the usual ‘I, me, myself’ staple of heroines. Sprightly but with feet firmly on ground, she smiles and says, "You bet I am not a rebel rather like any other normal girl who drinks green tea, sleeps by 11 in the night and takes care of her parents." She insists she is so normal that even the sabziwalas around the bend of Yari road where she lives are disappointed with her ‘no makeup no starry tantrums’ demeanour. However, she might not be cut of the same cloth as some of her bold portrayals like in Dev D, she can certainly identify with the tomboyish character in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Not too long ago, she was just that a tomboy till the realisation, "Oh I too can look pretty" hit her. But of course, she didn’t enter filmdom to become a glamour puss or heroine for that matter. Actor is what she wants to be known as, today, tomorrow as well as many decades from now. Though she grew up in Pondicherry watching Bollywood films and Tamil cinema, in particular, idolising Tamil star Surya, tinseltown was never on her radar. Armed with a degree in theatre from UK stage was the obvious and logical choice. Only "it didn’t pay bills" and then cinema happened totally by chance. She made waves with her debut in Dev D helmed by director Anurag Kashyap, the most important man in her life till recently. Talking about Kashyap, her husband till the other day doesn’t make her flinch or squirm. Actually, she is more than ready to take questions on him. Sure she will work with him again. Certainly, he is the most amazing director. Kalki does not believe in skirting over issues. It’s this refreshing forthrightness that makes her a delight. As she puts it, "The happiest people are the ones who have learnt to deal with their dark side." That’s the reason why she would not block hate comments on her social media sites. That’s why she can see humour in death and is all ready with a dark comedy, a play on death which she has just penned. Between theatre and cinema or for that matter writing and acting, she wouldn’t settle for this or that. A self-confessed greedy actor, she wants to have her cake and eat it too, sail in the waters of both commercial cinema and its offbeat counterpart. Though what does a typical heroine in a typical Hindi film means, she an actor of blockbusters like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara doesn’t quite know. For aren’t we living in exciting times in Bollywood when roles such as Queen are possible. While she would love to do a Queen, she is all excited about having played a cerebral palsy patient in Margarita With a Straw. Getting into the skin of palsy-afflicted person whom she observed at close quarters, she admits, was not only challenging but also unsettling. She says, "You can never really know what the person is undergoing. As she told me — At the end of it, you can get up from the wheelchair but I can’t." Tough task it might have been, Kalki tried to get the nuances right by talking to the physiotherapist and trained really hard for the part. In Jia Aur Jia she plays a Punjabi, though the Tamil character which Richa Chaddha is enacting would have been more suitable for Tamil-speaking Kalki. But then actors, she insists, are like chameleons, who not only can change colours but skins too at the drop of the hat. No wonder she gets her unconventional parts bang on. For normal, she might be ordinary she isn’t. Her extraordinariness not only reflects onscreen but also social causes to which she often lends her name. But be it the video It’s Your Fault drawing attention to violence against women or busting myths associated with menstruation or her monologue Truths About Womanhood, none of it is for effect.

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