Director Mangesh Joshi’s Marathi movie Lathe Joshi has been on a victorious run at a number of international film festivals since last year. The film, starring Chittaranjan Giri, Ashwini Giri, Om Bhutkar and Seva Chauhan, will finally hit the big screens on 13 July.
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In a chat with us, the film’s producer Amol Kagne expressed his happiness at the news, saying, “It feels very good. Before this film, my first film Halaal (2017) also won a lot of national and international awards. Lathe Joshi, our second film, also won the Best Film award at the Pune International Film Festival and also won awards in Bangalore and Kerala. It was also applauded outside India in the US, London and other places.”
According to the producer the film was supposed to be released only after it completed the festival run. “If the film releases in theatres first, it doesn’t receive appreciation and awards in the international markets. And then if you do its world television premiere, the topic just ends. The entire freshness of the film vanishes. We have strict information from Cannes and Venice that we shouldn’t release or open the film in any market,” he said.
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This was also the plan for Halaal. “Once the film garners appreciation and wins awards, it gives us hopes of releasing it in a better way. Even for my first film Halaal, we did festival rounds for around a year and a half. This is our plan for all our films,” Kagne said.
While speaking about his upcoming films, he said, “We have 4-5 films in the pipeline. One is Perfume. It has a very good subject. We are not sending it to festivals as I wish to experiment by releasing it directly in theatre either on 15 August or August end. It stars Sayaji Shinde, Chinmay Mandlekar, Bhagyashree Nhalve, Monalisa Bagal and others. We also have Bhongya, which will have international festivals rounds.”