NFDC’s Film Bazaar announces titles for Work-in-Progress Lab and Co-production Market

Film Bazaar yesterday announced its selections for the Work-in-Progress Lab and Co-production Market. The film market, which is organized by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), will be held online from 16 through 21 January 2021. It is usually held in November every year but was postponed this year on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The Work-In-Progress Lab includes features from five Indian languages — Konkani, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi and Tiwa. The five titles are Sreejith Karanavar's Konkani feature Aiz Maka Falea Tuka (Today Me Tomorrow You), Chhatrapal Ninawe's Marathi feature Ghaath (Ambush), Nithin Lukose's Malayalam feature PAKA – The River of Blood, Kuldip Patel's Hindi feature Powai and Dr Bobby Sarma Baruah's Tiwa feature Sikaisal.

Four of the five selected films are debut features; Baruah has many short films, documentaries, music videos and TV serials in her filmography. The mentors for the lab are producers Philippa Campbell and Olivia Stewart, veteran film critc Derek Malcolm, Marco Muller, artistic director of the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, film curator and programmer Marie-Pierre Duhamel and editor Lizi Gelber.

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The director and editor of the selected projects show their rough cuts to the mentors to receive an in-depth one-on-one feedback towards their final cut. Films like Eeb Allay Ooo! (2020), Bombay Rose (2020), Soni (2018), The Gold-Laden Sheep And The Sacred Mountain (2018), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017), Killa (2015), and Ship Of Theseus (2013) have previously been selected for the lab.

The Co-production Market consists of projects in 17 South Asian languages from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and features co-productions with France, Canada, China and the Netherlands.

These include filmmaker’s Onir’s next We Are, a co-production with Fae Pictures from Canada, and Pradip Kurbah’s Khasi film Ha Lyngkha Bneng (The Elysian Field), produced by China’s JS Studio.

Other South Asian selections include Pa Ranjith’s co-production of Shanawaz Nizamudeen’s Tamil film Bommainayagi (Queen Doll), Haobam Paban Kumar’s next film Eshing (Water) in Manipuri, Arun Fulara’s Kumaoni film My Home Is In The Hills, and Anjali Menon’s multi-lingual Rasa in English, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil.

Bauddhayan Mukherji’s Marathi film The Bookkeeper’s Wife and Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s Hindi film The Storyteller are also part of the market. A new French Institute Award, in collaboration with the French embassy in India, will be presented to one project from the market.

Besides the film market and lab, Film Bazaar will screen 129 features and 66 shorts from its Viewing Room library. According to a report in Screen Daily, the NFDC’s Knowledge Series will be held virtually, featuring webinars and pitches from the filmmakers selected for the market and its special recommendation programme. These will be available to watch in different time zones.