Dostojee, Pedro, Invisible Demons to be screened at BFI London Film Festival 2021

Prasun Chatterjee's debut Bengali feature Dostojee, Natesh Hegde’s Kannada feature Pedro and Rahul Jain’s documentary Invisible Demons will represent India at the 65th BFI London Film Festival next month.

Dostojee (Two Friends), featuring Asik Shaikh, Arif Shaikh, and Jayati Chakraborty, will have its world premiere at the festival. The Bengali film is set in 1993 after the destruction of the Babri mosque. The film revolves around the friendship of two young boys, Safikul and Palash, in West Bengal that goes on to be affected by the hateful incident in Uttar Pradesh.

Produced by Chatterjee, Prosenjit Ranjan Nath, Soumya Mukhopadhyay and Ivy Yu-Hua Shen, Dostojee was part of the Film Bazaar Goes to Cannes film market programme in 2020 and the National Film Development Corporation's (NFDC) Viewing Room in 2019.

Pedro, which is having its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, features the director’s father Gopal Hegde in the titular role. The film, which also features Ramakrishna Bhat Dundi and Medini Kelmane, follows Pedro (Gopal) who accidentally kills a cow, setting him against his local community in Karnataka.

Jain's second documentary Invisible Demons turns its lens on Delhi and the effects of climate change on the poorer population of the capital. The film had previously been screened in July as part of the Cannes Film Festival's new section, Cinema For The Climate.

The Indian films will be screened as part of the Strands section of the festival where each selection is based on a mood. Dostojee is slotted in for Love, Pedro for Dare and Invisible Demons for Debate. The Bangladeshi feminist drama, Rehana, by Abdullah Mohammad Saad, which had its premiere at Cannes earlier this year is also part of the Debate section. Azmeri Haqui Badhon stars as a single mom and assistant professor who tries to do the right thing after witnessing a sexual assault.

The festival will open with the world premiere of Netflix’s The Harder They Fall, directed by Jeymes Samuel, and close with Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic play. This year’s edition will be available to audiences with screenings and events across the UK as well as online on the BFI Player.