A classy Indian quartet at TIFF

Saibal Chatterjee

The four Indian titles in the 2019 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, September 5-15) straddle a spectrum of genres and storytelling styles. Perched between the story of a real-life urban couple learning life lessons from a terminally ill but spirited daughter (Shonali Bose’s The Sky is Pink) and a tale of a runaway buffalo that sparks a frenzy in a small town (Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu) are two divergent takes on Mumbai in Gitanjali’s animated feature Bombay Rose and Geetu Mohandas’ gritty drama Moothon (The Elder One). 

Notably, three of these four films have been directed by women. Priyanka Chopra, who toplines the cast of The Sky is Pink, is one of the ambassadors of TIFF’s ‘Share Her Journey’ campaign, which is aimed at promoting gender parity in the movie industry. 

The maker of The Sky is Pink, Shonali Bose is, on her part, a TIFF veteran. Each of the three films that she has helmed has screened in North America’s premier festival. TIFF will host the world premiere of The Sky is Pink, in a Gala screening on September 13. The film is scheduled for release on October 11. 

The Sky is Pink, starring Farhan Akhtar and Zaira Wasim, besides Chopra, portrays a 25-year relationship between a couple viewed through the lens of a teenage girl diagnosed with severe combined immuno-deficiency. Bose’s first two films, Amu (2005) and Margarita with a Straw (2015), both critically acclaimed cinematic essays, also played in Toronto. 

At the other end of the India’s TIFF spectrum is Gitanjali Rao, a celebrated animation filmmaker who has carved her own niche in a nation where animated films are not only rare but also usually targeted only at children. She employs the medium to tell complex, layered stories about her city and its people, especially those who need to retreat into dream worlds to escape the harsh realities of the  urban grind that they must undergo on a day-to-day basis. 

Rao’s first feature, Bombay Rose, which has made TIFF’s Contemporary World Cinema cut, looks at street-dwellers, who live on the margins of the megapolis. “I have always wanted to tell stories,” Rao says in her director’s note, “about the unsung heroes who live and love in Mumbai, never become success stories, yet their struggle for survival makes heroes out of them.” Bombay Rose is composed of frame-by-frame painted animation, a painstaking process that took all of two years.

Rao’s short films, Printed Rainbow (2006), which picked up multiple prizes, and True Love Story (2014), which contained the kernel of Bombay Rose, screened in Cannes Critics’ Week and went on to scoop up awards and accolades in many other festivals across the world.

Mumbai also plays a key role in actress-turned-filmmaker Geetu Mohandas’ Malayalam film, Moothon (The Elder One), which revolves around a young small-town boy who travels to the bustling city to look for his big brother. Although Mohandas is a TIFF first-timer, her maiden feature, Liar’s Dice (2013), had premiered in the Sundance Film Festival and was India’s official nomination for the Oscars. 

Moothon, starring Nivin Pauly, Sobhita Dhulipala and Shashank Arora, is co-produced by Anurag Kashyap, who has also written the dialogues for the Hindi version of the film. For Kashyap, TIFF has become an annual ritual. His last two films, Mukkabaaz and Manmarziyaan, were both in the festival.

Lijo Jose Pellissery, one of the most exciting flag-bearers of the new Malayalam cinema, is in this year’s lineup with Jallikattu, based on a short story, Maoist, written by S. Hareesh. The maker of Angamaly Diaries and Ee.Ma.Yau focusses on a buffalo that flees from his owner’s clutches on the eve of its planned slaughter. As the people of the town in Kerala’s Idukki district set out to recapture the animal, dormant animosities bubble to the surface and unleash unsettling violence. 

Jallikattu — the title is derived from the Tamil bull-running tradition that has sparked much debate — explores the faultlines of a politically volatile state that, pretty much like the people in the story that the film narrates, are increasingly being divided along destructively emotive lines.