Kashmir the Focal Point in ‘Eeb Allay Ooo!’ Filmmaker Prateek Vats’ Busan APM Project ‘Chronicles of a Confession’
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After his fiction feature debut, the absurdist satire “Eeb Allay Ooo!,” Indian filmmaker Prateek Vats is readying political comedy “Chronicles of a Confession.” The film is a selection at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Project Market.
“Eeb Allay Ooo!” won big at the Mumbai Film Festival and went on to play at the Berlinale, Sao Paolo and Valladolid among many other festivals. Written by Vidur Nauriyal and Vats, “Chronicles of a Confession” will follow a Kashmiri shawl seller whose confession to a bomb blast he didn’t commit spurs an investigation revealing truths as absurd as everyday life in Kashmir, northern India.
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A few years back Vats chanced upon a news report about a young Kashmiri man walking into a police station in Mumbai and confessing to a series of bomb blasts and investigations revealed that the concerned man had nothing to do with the blasts and had claimed responsibility because he was fed up with his life in Kashmir and thought that life in jail would be better. That was the genesis of “Chronicles of a Confession.”
“I do not claim to understand the varied nuances of the situation in Kashmir, let alone articulate any solutions for it. However, I often find myself trying to rationalize a universe where a false claim to a bomb blast is a viable option towards making one’s life better. In many ways, this film is an extension of my long-term engagement with finding appropriate cinematic forms to tell urgent stories – ones which do not fit neatly into strictly compartmentalized political discourses. And I seek to build on the work put into my first feature film ‘Eeb Allay Ooo!’ which is an absurdist satire about a world where becoming a monkey is more liberating than staying human,” Vats told Variety.
A bone of contention between India and Pakistan, Kashmir was referred to as “paradise on earth” by the poet Amir Khusro and the epithet has stuck despite more than 70 years of conflict.
“How does life in jail become a better option than living in ‘paradise on earth?’ This film is an attempt to understand this single fundamental question and the tragedy surrounding it. This film is not about the conflict. It is about how people negotiate the destabilizing absurdities of everyday life in a conflict zone. The film deals with themes of identity, mental health and other aspects of everyday life in the world’s most militarized region,” Vats said.
“Chronicles of a Confession” is being produced by Ranjan Singh and Sahana Manjesh for Tailormade Films (“Hunterrr”). The film’s budget is $1.2 million, of which $400,000 has been raised so far.
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