Adh Chanani Raat, Meghdoot, Duvidha to be screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022

Ten films from India will be showcased at the 52nd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), which will be held from 26 January to 6 February. The event will be held online for the second consecutive year due to growing concerns over the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus across Europe.

According to the programme shared by the festival's organizers, Rahat Mahajan’s Meghdoot (The Cloud Messenger) and Rajeev Ravi’s Malayalam feature Thuramukham (The Harbour) will battle it out in the Tiger Competition and Big Screen Competition respectively.

Besides this, Sajas Rahman and Shinos Rahman's Malayalam documentary-drama hybrid Chavittu (Stomp), Krishnendu Kalesh's Malayalam feature Prappeda (Hawk's Muffin) and Geetika Narang Abbasi’s Hindi documentary Urf will also be screened at IFFR. Mahesh Narayanan’s Malayalam feature Maalik and Mani Kaul’s classic ghost film Duvidha are also part of the selection.

Gurvinder Singh’s next Punjabi-language feature, Adh Chanani Raat (Crescent Night), will have its world premiere at IFFR in the Harbour section. The film has been produced by Bobby Bedi, Vipul D Shah, Manmohan Shetty and Rajesh Bahl. Adh Chanani Raat is the third instalment in Singh's trilogy of Punjabi films after Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan and Chauthi Koot, which have been adapted from the works of noted Punjabi authors. The film is inspired by Gurdial Singh’s eponymous novel.

Sharing his thoughts on the film, Gurvinder Singh said, “Adh Chanani Raat is about a sadness on the verge of implosion that engulfs a silent agrarian land. Here is an unwritten violence, simmering under the surface, in which the margins are pushed far into a breakdown of basic human relations. It is a violence that scripts the alienation of the being from its own selfhood. It is also about the last-ditch resistance of the oppressed.” 

“Cinematically, for me, it's the culmination of a journey that started with Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan, the tropes pared down to the bare essential leading to an interiorized and a self-reflective form,” he added. 

Producer Bobby Bedi, who has collaborated with Gurvinder Singh for the second time after Khanaur. He said, “A Punjabi farmer’s love for his land is special and transcends economics, relationships and even emotions. It gives the farmer a special strength. This love came to the forefront in the recent farmers' protests in North India. Gurvinder captures this love and the violence that may stem from it in an exceptionally poetic way in Adh Chanani Raat."

The Bengali and Marathi short films Madhu and Aadigunjan (Murmurs of the Jungle), which have been made by Tanmay and Tanvi Chowdhary and Sohil Vaidya respectively, will also be screened at the festival.