Voice From Elsewhere, Phoring win awards at Film Bazaar

The Prasad award, which covers the digital post-production costs of the winning film, went to Indranil Roychowdhury’s Phoring, a coming-of-age drama set in northern Bengal. The film screened in Film Bazaar’s Work-in-Progress section, while A Voice From Elsewhere had been selected for the Co-production Market.

Meanwhile, CineMart selected four producers from all sections of Film Bazaar to take part in next year’s Rotterdam Lab – a producers’ training programme that runs during the Rotterdam film festival. The four producers are Aditi Anand of Little Red Car Films (with her project Bhopal Live!), Vivek Gomber of Zoo Films (with Court), Anusha Rizvi of Third World Films (with Opium) and Nilesh Navlakha of Navlakha Arts.

It was also announced that Mosotofa S. Farooki’s Biscuit Race, one of the projects selected for Film Bazaar’s Co-production Market, will also participate in the Dubai Film Market, under a partnership between Film Bazaar and the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF). 

This year’s edition of Film Bazaar was the biggest yet with more than 800 delegates, far surpassing the 516 pre-registered guests. Attendees included a broad range of international sales agents, distributors, producers, film festivals and funding bodies from more than 30 countries.

Several projects found co-producers or sales agents during the four days of meetings, seminars and networking events at the Goa Marriott Resort.

Among these, director-producer Partho Sen-Gupta was able to lock finance for Sunrise (Arunoday) during Film Bazaar, following a deal struck with Shrihari Sathe’s Infinitum Productions. Guneet Monga of India’s Sikhya Entertainment signed a deal with Giulia Achilli of Italy’s Dugong Production to co-produce the documentary An Indian Kiss (working title).

As the market wrapped, French sales agent Insomnia World Sales was in talks to acquire Sange Dorjee Thongdok’s Work-in-Progress project Crossing Bridges and several other deals were under discussion.

Meanwhile, the Cannes film festival used the occasion to announce that India will be the guest country at next year’s edition of the festival (see separate story). Film Bazaar wrapped with a performance by fusion artist Susheela Raman at a party hosted by India’s Ministry of Tourism and the Incredible India campaign.