Agra
Original Title:
Agra
Duration:
132 minutes
Country:
India
Language:
Hindi with English Subtitles
Director(s):
Kanu Behl
Guru, a young man in his twenties, works in a call center in Agra. In love with Mala, a work colleague, he stills lives with his parents, whose house is divided in two parts. Guru lives on the ground floor with his mother while his father is upstairs with his mistress. when Guru announces that he wants to marry Mala, and make the terrace of the house his future bedroom, nothing goes as planned. Frustrations, faults and family hatreds come to light, symptoms of an Indian patriarchal society with many taboos.
Quote:
"A hard-hitting and audacious film that will leave no one indifferent and that only a formally talented filmmaker like Kanu Behl could bring to a safe harbour beyond its ambient darkness." - Fabien Lemercier (Cineuropa)
Awards:
+ Mumbai Film Festival: Jury Special Prize
+ Indian Film Festival of Melbourne: Best Director and Best Actor
+ Cannes Director's Fortnight: Quinzaine des cineastes nominee
+ Kerala International Film Festival: Golden Crow Pheasant Nominee
+ Sao Paulo International Film Festival: Best Fiction Nominee New Directors Competition
Presented By:
Heinz College DICE
Sponsored By:
SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival, Indian Groceries Oakland
Event Schedule
Date:
March 29
Venue:
McConomy Auditorium
Screening Time:
7:00pm
Doors Open:
6:30pm
Director Bio
Kanu Behl studied at the Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute, where he got a degree in filmmaking. His first documentary, AN ACTOR PREPARES (2006, produced by SRFTI, India) was in competition at the Cinéma du Réel in Paris in 2007. He then produced and directed three other documentaries for NHK in Japan, ZDF and ARTE in Germany : FOUND HIM YET ? (2007), THREE BLIND MEN (2008), OVER THRESHOLDS (2009). In 2007, he moved into feature films by becoming Dibakar Banerjee’s assistant director on the hit film OYE LUCKY ! LUCKY OYE !. In 2010, they co-wrote LSD: LOVE SEX AND DELUSION. The film was unanimously praised by the critics, and made him known as a promising screenwriter. TITLI marked Kanu Behl directorial debut and was selected in 2014 at the Festival de Cannes in the section Un Certain Regard. It received the best Foreign Work