Montreal World Film Festival's blog

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Monday, September 1-------A new Indian film is making its World Premiere bow at the Montreal World Film Festival. Chaturanga is based on the novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Rabindranath Tagore, and is directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay, one of the most exciting and promising young filmmakers working in India.

The film is the story of a love that is caught between conflicting worlds of ideas. The lead protagonist Sachish flees from radical positivism to religious mysticism in his quest for life's meaning. However, his search ultimately yields nothing but crushing disillusionment. This is because he cannot square his abstract ideals with the powerful presences of two women in his life. One of them is Damini, a young Hindu widow, and the other is Nanibala, the abandoned mistress of Sachish's own brother.

Chaturanga is director Suman Mukhopadhyay's second feature film. In 2005, Suman completed his first feature film, Herbert, based on a novel by Nabarun Bhattacharya. The film was given the National Award for Best Regional Film. Other prizes he has amassed in his young career include Most Promising Director (BFJA), Best Debut Director (Lankesh Award) and Audience Award in the Dhaka International Film Festival. Herbert was screened in a number of national and international film festivals including Cannes, Florence, Bangkok, Mumbai, Pune and Kerala. He is currently scripting The Hungry Tide, based on the novel by Amitav Ghosh, and also is much in demand in his native India as one of the best young theater directors, having directed productions ranging from European drama to major adaptations of Bengali masterpieces.

"Since my university days, the novel of Chaturanga has been provoking me, disturbing me", the director said in a prepared statement. "The film deals with questions, which are contemporary and timeless. It interrogates our perception of the human evolution. Therefore, Chaturanga proposes an unending journey, a timeless quest."

For more information on the film, please visit the website: http://www.chaturangathefilm.in 

Sandy Mandelberger, Montreal FF Dailies Editor