The much awaited teaser of Kaushik Ganguly’s Nagarkirtan is out. The film has already created a buzz with protagonist Riddhi Sen receiving the National Best Actor award last year for his portrayal of a transgendered person.
The film also received three other awards — the Special Jury prize, Best Makeup Artiste and Best Costume Designer — at the 65th National Film awards.
Nagarkirtan is not only a love story between a transgendered person and a flautist, played by Ritwick Chakraborty, but it also reveals the reality of a community that is fighting every moment to have its rights recognized by society despite decriminalization of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
The teaser of Nagarkirtan is brief yet poetic. It hints to the passion and the artistic sensibilities that pervade the film despite dealing with a harsh reality.
The teaser takes off with a kirtan, or devotional song, that suggests the associated culture of the characters but has more allusions to it. The shot of Punti (Riddhi Sen) carrying an icon of Nitai or Sree Chaitanya conveys the reference to Ardhanarishwar that Ganguly has perhaps drawn repeatedly in the film.
The glimpses of Punti and Madhu making love and Punti serving a cup of tea to Madhu while the latter plays the flute sketch a beautiful picture of their romance that involves a lot of passion as well as sensitivity.
Even the final shot of the lighting of a lamp in front of a mirror seems to be symbolic of the unspoken nights of the two lovers that are often cornered into the darkness of stigma.