The Auroville Film Festival is pleased to do a public screening of three films from the festival. The feature film, Nazarband (Captive), was not available on the online platform and this will be the only opportunity to watch it!

  • When: 8pm, 14 April 2022
  • Where: Cinema Paradiso, Auroville

Tuã Ingugu (Water Eyes)

2019, Brazil, Documentary, Portuguese, 11min

In the cosmogony of the Kalapalo (an ethnic group living in the Xingú Indigenous Park), water is as old as humans and is the source of life. That is where all their sustenance comes from; Their food, their drink and their joy. The idea of using water as a dumpster, of poisoning water, is a dystopia. In Tuã Ingugu (Water Eyes), Chief Faremá from Caramujo village on the banks of the Kuluene River, tells us about the birth of water and warns us of the consequences of disrespecting it.

Screenings / Awards: Festival Curta Cinema – Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Rome Film Festival Roma Italy, are a few of the places where this movie was screened, among other International Festivals around the world.

Director, Writer: Daniela Thomas
Producer: Daniel van Hoogstraten
Cast: Faremá Kalapalo, Kanho Matipu

Mbas Mi

2020-07-16 Senegal, Experimental, English, Wolof, 8min

In times of social distancing and mask mandates to protect one’s neighbor, expression becomes an invaluable act to preserve our humanity. In Mbas Mi, the director invites Goo Mamadou Ba to lend his voice to revive an essential text. In the twilight of Memory Island*, an incantatory voice rises. Carried by the surf, it changes according to memory. From the alleys dotted with man-lanterns to the tops of sentinel baobabs, the words of Albert Camus’s “La Peste” resonate.

Note: The painful memories of the Atlantic slave trade are crystallized in the Island of Gorée, a small island of 28 hectares lying 3.5 km off the coast from Dakar. Since the 15th century, this “memory island” has been prized by various European nations that have successively used it as a stopover or slave market. (source: Unesco)

Director: Joseph Gaï Ramaka
Producer: Yanis Gaye
Voice: Goo Mamadou Ba

Nazarband (Captive)

2020, India, Feature, Hindi, 1hr 25min

Vasanti comes out from prison into the megalopolis of Kolkata after serving a five-year prison term, only to realize that her husband hasn’t come to receive her. She waits in anxiety and despair. Chandu, who has also been released on the same day, offers to help in finding her husband. Chandu is a seasoned fraudster and has an ulterior motive as well. Although not very comfortable with this stranger, Vasanti takes his support to find her way to where she used to live, in the slums of Calcutta. But when they reach the place, she finds a dazzling mall and a few multi-storied buildings that have replaced the slums. Without any clue about the whereabouts of her husband or seven-year-old son, Vasanti is in deep anguish, but does not give up. Chandu sticks with this stubborn woman in a journey that goes through the labyrinth of the city in search of her family. Political goons, flesh traders, police and real estate mafia get entangled in the narrative, which reveals the past of these two, unknown to each other until that very morning. They delve into the deeper crevices of their emotions and insecurities, moving erratically, on a strange journey steeped in a plethora of emotions: anxiety, distrust, dependence, hatred, care, greed, frustration, and necessity. They run amok through the city of Kolkata, disappearing into the religious carnival, before finally reaching the coalfields of Bihar. After a fanatical and sometimes fatalistic turn of events, they reach the climactic moment that opens up multiple possibilities in Chandu and Vasanti’s lives.

Director: Suman Mukhopadhyay
Writers: Suman Mukhopadhyay, Asad Hussain, Anustup Basu
Producer: Pawan Kanodia
Cast: Indira Tiwari, Tanmay, Dhanania