Aparna Sen’s ‘The Rapist’, Farooki’s ‘No Land’s Man’ in award race at Busan film fest

Kolkata: Aparna Sen’s ‘

The Rapist

’ and Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s ‘No Land’s Man’ are among the seven nominees for the prestigious Kim Jiseok award at the 26th

Busan

International Film Festival (BIFF). The other films in competition for award are Wang Qi’s ‘The Bargain’, Ilgar Najaf’s ‘Sughra’s Sons’, Ogigami Naoko’s ‘Riverside Mukolitta’, Royston Tan’s ‘24’ and Brillante Mendoza’s ‘Gensan Punch’. The festival will be held between October 6 and 15.

According to the BIFF website, Sen’s film narrates a story about an incident that completely disrupts the comfortable life of a couple, who are both professors and anti-death penalty activists. The 76-year-old director has made an insightful portrayal about the problems of gender, class, laws and institutions in India by capturing the devastating aftermath of the incident that the couple faced in the film.

Sen’s ‘The Rapist’ stars Konkona Sen Sharma, Arjun Rampal and Tanmay Dhanania. According to Sen: “Apart from trying to explore the reasons why our society turns out rapists in such numbers, and looking into the inequalities in our social system that are responsible for giving rise to criminals, what drew me to this story was the psychology of the three protagonists.”

Rabiranjan Maitra

, who has edited the film in Kolkata, said shooting of the Hindi film ended in the first week of April in New Delhi. “Soon, lockdown was declared in various Indian cities. The only option to edit and send it to Busan on time was to complete the editing in Kolkata at Eskay Digilab,” he said.

According to him, this film is about the social system of looking at the predator and the survivor. “It explores what happens to society when such an incident takes places. Perhaps for the first time, we have an Indian film trying to understand the psyche of a rapist and why he commits such a heinous crime,” he added.

Meanwhile, Farooki is currently in Kolkata for the colour gradation of his film by

Debojyoti Ghosh

at EditFX. “I like to work with Debojyoti,” he told TOI. His film stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Megan Mitchell, Tahsan Khan, Eisha Chopra, Kiran Khoje and Vikram Kochhar and has original music by AR Rahman. An English language film with some dialogues in Hindi, Urdu, French, and Bengali, it explores how a charismatic young man goes on an eventful quest to find a place he can call home. Speaking about the nomination, Farooki said: “We make films primarily because we feel increasingly agitated to tell the story. However, when it gets some recognition or love, it always feels good. It feels really good when it’s from Busan.”

The film deals with discrimination and hate crimes based on race, religion, and nationality. Farooki was born in Noakhali. “People from this area have been heavily trolled for years. So, from a very early age, I came to realize that I will have to find ways to protect myself from being trolled!” he said. With time, he understood how these complexities “create a hole” in the heart when one can’t be “known”, “accepted” or “feel comfortable” as who one is. “Those childhood feelings informed the existential pain that the central character in ‘No Land’s Man’ feels,” he said.