Offbeat Indian Movies

A compilation of Indian movies which are making waves in the festival circuits internationally . Hopefully these would find a release here in India too .

Kabootar (2008)

The film Kabootar premiered at the 10th Osians-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema and was much appreciated by the audience. Touted as the most violent movie ever made in India , Kabootar traces the life of four misguided youths in the heartland of Madhya Pradesh . This Anubhav Sinha production which elicited a stunned audience response followed by a standing ovation, has debutant Maqbool Khan at the helm of direction. It has also won Govind Namdeo, one of the key protagonists from the film, an award for the Best Actor.

The movie hopefully will not be butchered by censors here in India. Anubhav Sinha now plans to take the movie across to international movie fests before releasing it here in early 2009 .


Frozen (2007)

Credits:
Director/writer/producer: Shivajee Chandrabhushan
Executive producer/Director of photography: Shanker Raman
Music: John P. Varkey
Cast:
Karma: Danny Denzongpa
Lasya: Gauri
Chomo: Skalzang Angchuk Gultuk

The joke is that the officials in the Mumbai airport now recognise Shivajee( director/producer)as he is ofetn seen in the Mumbai airport travelling across the globe with his first film "Frozen ".I first heard about the movie a acouple of years back when it was being shot in the extremely cold and hostile conditions in Ladakh during peak winter. The movie is unique in the sense that it was shot in colour, then converted it to a digital intermediate so that the whole film could be processed in black and white later.

The movie revolves around Lasya, a mixed-race teenager, and her brother and widower father. Their entire life turns yopsy turvy when they need to adjust to a new reality when the army, searching the frontier for terrorists, sets up a base just a few metres from their house. Critcally acclaimed across the world in different festivals , the movie may just get a theatrical release sometime here too

Mumbai Cutting ( 2008)
Directed by 11 Indian directors ,with music by 11 music directors the film unfolds various facets of Mumbai ( " Inspired" by Paris Jet'aime ) With Sudhir Mishra, Rahul Dholakia, Revati, Rituparno Ghosh, Kundan Shah, Anurag Kashyap, Shashanka Ghosh, Ruchi Narain, Jahanu Barua, Manish Jha, Ayush Raina, being the directors, the films star Soha Ali Khan, Jimmy Shergil, Sonali Kulkarni, Ranvir Sheorey, Vinay Pathak, Sushant Singh, Tara Sharma, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Raima Sen, Palash Sen, Shruti Seth, Rahul Dev, Deepak Dobriyal, Dipannita Sharma, Kavita Kaushik, Samrin, Sanjay Narvekar, Mahek Chel.

The music also lends diverse flavours from Euphoria, Indian Ocean, Ali Azmat, Fuzon, Sanjeev Shrivastav, Jeet Ganguly, Amartya and Papon, with vocals by Shreya Goshal, Shafquat Amanat Ali Khan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Nachiketa, Papon and Ali Azmat.

Last Lear ( 2007)

Based on Utpal Dutt's play Aajker Shahjaha and directed by Rituparno Ghosh, The Last Lear features Amitabh , Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal. The Last Lear premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2007. Besides being the first full-length English movie in Amitabh's career, it is also the first time that Big B is portraying the character of an actor on screen.

Before the Rains ( 2008)
Director: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Linus Roache, Nandita Das, Rahul Bose, Jennifer Ehle,

Set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, BEFORE THE RAINS is the English language debut of Santosh Sivan. An idealistic young Indian man (Rahul Bose) finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss (Linus Roache) and a village woman (Nandita Das).