Sri Lankan director's Bengali film India's entry at this year's Cannes

A scene from “Chatrak”.

A Bengali feature film by acclaimed Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara -- who says he has been highly influenced by the work of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen -- will be the only Indian entry at this year's Cannes Festival beginning on May 11.
The 90-minute film “Chatrak” (Mushroom) is set in Kolkata and revolves around the story of a non-resident Indian businessman who returns to the “City of Joy” for good from Dubai, meets his girlfriend and gets into the construction business.
Starring Paoli Dam, Sudip Mukherjee and German actor Tomas Lemarquis, the film will be shown in the Directors' Fortnight, a non-competitive section at Cannes.
“Chatrak” is the second film from India to be screened at the seaside town of French Riviera this year, the other being Bollywood director Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra's documentary “Bollywood: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told”.
Although Jayasundara is not new to Cannes -- his debut feature film “Sulanga Enu Pinisa” (The Forsaken Land) had won the Camerd'Or award there in 2005 -- he is excited about this year's festival because this is the first time he has directed a feature film in a foreign language.
Promising Bengali director of Kolkata, Bappaditya Bandopadhyay, helped Jayasundara by translating his English script for “Chatrak”. Bandopadhyay is also a co-producer of the film.
A student of India's Film and Television Institute, Jayasundara spent six months in Kolkata before shooting “Chatrak” in the city and Shantiniketan in just under a month.
Jayasundara says he has grown up watching and influenced by the films of Ray, Ghatak and Sen and singles out “Pather Panchali” and “Meghe Dhaka Tara” as his personal favourites.
It was after watching Ray's “Jalsaghar” in 1998 that the Sri Lankan director wanted to make a film in Bengali but he had to wait for 13 years to realise his dream. That apart, the icing on the cake for Jayasundara is that the “dream product” will be screened at one of the world's biggest festivals.