Bengali film to compete in Hong Kong festival

Kolkata: A Bengali feature film — ‘Manikbabur Megh’ (MM) — has been selected to compete at the Firebird award of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF). This is one of Asia’s oldest international film festivals and was founded in 1976. HKIFF Firebird Awards include three categories: Young Cinema Competition, Documentary Competition and Short Film Competition.While Abhinandan Banerjee’s MM is the only Indian feature film competing in the Young Cinema segment, Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ is the only Indian documentary in the documentary section.
At this year’s Kolkata International Film Festival, ‘MM’ (The Cloud and the Man) starring Chandan Sen, Bratya Basu, Debesh Roy Chowdhury, Nimai Ghosh and Arun Guhathakurta won NETPAC’s Best Film in Asian Select section. Banerjee’s debut feature film is about Manik who lives in Kolkata. A middle-aged loner, Manik lives a solitary existence tending to his plants, insects and his catatonic father. When he is bereaved, Manik’s world begins to unravel until he notices a solitary cloud following him. Initially unnerved by this bizarre turn of events, Manik’s opinion of his newfound companion begins to change. Shot in black-and-white, Banerjee’s film is an optimistic meditation on grief and loss, perception and understanding, and accepting our place in the world.
The film is competing with Michael Koch’s ‘A Piece of Sky’, Jöns Jönsson’s ‘Axiom’, László Csuja and Anna Nemes’s ‘Gentle’, Maryna Er Gorbach’s ‘Klondike’, Emmanuelle Nicot’s ‘Love According to Dalva’, Maha Haj’s ‘Mediterranean Fever’ and Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s ‘Uttama’.
Chandan Sen in 'Manikbabur Megh'
In recent times, very few Bengali feature films have been selected to compete at international awards of repute. Banerjee said it is mostly due to “lack of exclusivity, purity and originality”. “Cinema, as a bricolage art medium, has a different kind of evolution pattern than others due to its foundational attachment with commerce. here, after ticking all the boxes to secure the finance, probably fresh minds are either suffering from lack of creativity or originality in conceiving or crafting their ideas or they are lacking in the vision of the journey of the film. Primarily, it is the lack of originality in thoughts and craft that is causing the drought. Of course, once an original film is conceived, producing becomes next big thing,” he said.
Director Bauddhayan Mukherji, who has produced the film with Monalisa Mukherji, said: “It is important to tell stories which are not run of the mill. It is important to believe in films which might not give you the numbers. An HKIFF selection and nomination for the Firebird Award is a huge pat on the back for producers like us who believe in following their hearts and telling unusual stories that we feel need to co-exist in the universe.”
HKIFF screens around 230 films from more than 60 countries in different major cultural venues every year. The festival has premiered anthologies of short films made by award-winning filmmakers from Asia including Ann Hui, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Jia Zhangke, Brillante Mendoza, Hideo Nakata, Tsai Ming-Jiang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.