Two Bollywood oriented films have set mouths chattering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The first is Gurinder Chandha’s astonishing horror comedy It’s A Wonderful Afterlife that was the opening movie at the Festival. Starring former Fred Flintstone Mark Addy and Persuasion’s Sally Hawkins, the film is about an Indian mother-in-law who takes the responsibility of her duties seriously even beyond death.
Full of the life, joy, music and colour of a typical Bollywood movie, It’s A Wonderful Afterlife features a number of great cameos from artists such as Shabana Azmi, Sendhil Ramamurthy from Heroes, Goldy Notay, Sanjeev Bhaskar and newcomer Kiran Singh.
The second is the Aamir Khan produced Peepli Live. The movie is a black comedy about two rural farmers. The reception at Sundance has made Aamir very proud of his director. “I am so happy and proud of my writer-director Anusha Rizvi,” he says, “Peepli Live has been selected at the Sundance Film Festival in the competition section. If I’m not mistaken, it is the first Indian feature film to make it to the competition section there.”
