Sudhir Mishra’s Tere Kya Hoga Johnny/Ride The Wave Johnny will premiere at the London International Film Festival on October 13th and is scheduled for release in India on November 28th. The film stars Neil Nitin Mukesh, Soha Ali Khan and Shahana Goswami. Compared in style to Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love, the film is a visual feast and Soha Ali Khan a revelation as a girl whose life is running out of control. Neil Nitin Mukesh also establishes himself in the movie as one of the most magnetic of new wave Indian stars. The producers will be making the most of the opportunity by setting up camp in London.
The Festival also features Gulaal, perhaps one of the most under-rated and under-promoted movies of the year. Anurag Kahyap’s political thriller about radical student politics stars KK Menon and Piyush Mishra and starts its run on Saturday, October 17th.
Up-and-coming film-maker Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni presents The Well with a previously unknown cast including Madan Deodhar and Renuka Daptardar. It begins on Saturday, October 24th. Essentially a coming of age drama exploring the dosti of two cousins, it challenges age-old rural believes related to arranged marriage as the two boys seek to rescue their female cousin from a forced marriage, arranged for financial gain.
If Ride The Wave Johnny is the main course, Shyam Benegal’s comedy Well Done Abba looks like being the dessert of the festival. With Boman Irani and Minissha Lamba, Bengal paints an hilarious and heart-warming story of Indian rural life and the taxi-driver middle men who hold the fabric of village life together with wheeling and dealing and main-chancing at every opportunity.
The 53rd London Film Festival also includes a wide range of other mouth-watering movies for the cineaste from around the world including Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animation Fantastic Mr Fox; Jane Campion’s beautiful exploration of the young tragic poet John Keats, Bright Star; the George Clooney satire The Men Who Stare at Goats another Jean-Pierre Jeunet classic in MICMACS; the Korean movie Air Doll; the cosmic Astro Boy; Mike Judge’s latest masterpiece Extract; and Yoichi Sai’s ninja epic Kamui.
