Filmmaker Indranil Banerjee’s short ‘Urmimala’ fetches accolades at global festivals

Filmmaker Indranil Banerjee who received a lot of praise for his horror anthology ‘4 Shades of Leap’ is on cloud nine. His latest short film ‘

Urmimala

’ has been fetching accolades at prestigious global festivals. Within the past one week, this short has bagged as many as five awards - Asish Pathak for Best Actor (4th

Florida Beach International

film festival), Best Director (Mount Fuji International Film Festival), Best Soundtrack (Europe Film Festival), Best Director FINALIST (Sweden Film Awards) and Best Director ( Best Istanbul Film Awards).

The young Kolkata filmmaker who has previously make critically acclaimed films like ‘The Chase’ (2015), ‘The Mirage’ (2016), ‘Trinayani —The 3rd Eye’ (2017), ‘One Night Stand’ (2018), ‘Hello’ (2019) and ‘Hakchoooo’ (2020) says it feels great to see the hard work is paying off.

“From my childhood, I remember watching

Toy Story

,

Jurassic Park

, Satyajit Ray’s

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne

and James Cameron’s Titanic. It was movies that excited me at such a young age and that continued when I grew up. I started doing photography and learning about films. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and others inspired me. Quentin Tarantino inspired me to learn storytelling through camera tactics, while Satyajit Ray inspired me on how characters can come to life and music can elevate each story. My best friend and elder sister

Indrani Banerjee

helped me by giving me film-making books,” shares Indranil while speaking about his inspiration behind the memorable filmmaking journey.

‘Urmimala’, starring Asish Pathak, Shampa Mukherjee, Piyali Dhar, Satya Charan Sardar and Gokul Mullick in key role, revolves around an established author. One day a beautiful floozy woman enters the author’s room at midnight. A totally quiescent and secluded aura prevails all around. The lady comes towards the author and introduces herself. The next few moments change the author’s life forever. The characters created by the author often become alive and vivacious in the auxiliary world of imagination and perception. So, what happens here? That’s what forms the crux of the story.