Nair, Jha lead India at London festival

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Mira Nair

Nine films from India, including Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Prakash Jha’s Chakravyuh, have been selected for the 56th London Film Festival, which will take place from October 10 to October 21 this year. The festival will present 225 feature films and 111 shorts from more than 65 countries.
Film based on Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, which has been directed by Deepa Mehta, is also being showcased at the festival and is in the running for the best film award along with 11 other films. Rushdie, who has written the screenplay for the film, will give a talk about Midnight’s Children, a Canada-UK production, at the festival.
Debut director Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus, a documentary-style drama about three separate stories based in Mumbai tackling identity, justice, beauty and death, is also in the running for Sutherland Award, which recognises the most original and imaginative directorial debut.
Prakash Jha’s Chakra-vyuh, which is about two brothers’ struggle in context of the Naxalite conflict, will be presented with a red carpet gala screening at the festival.
Mira Nair’s adaption of Moshin Hamid’s bestseller The Reluctant Fundam-entalist, starring Riz Ah-med, Kiefer Sutherland, Kate Hudson and Shabana Azmi, will also get a gala opening at the festival. The film is an India, United States and Pakistan co-production. Two other Indian co-productions chosen for the festival are Save Your Legs!, directed by Boyd Hicklin, and With You, Without You (Oba Nathu-wa Oba Ekka), directed by Prasanna Vithanage.
Save Your Legs!, a co-production with Australia, is a comedy about the Indian tour by a D-grade cricket team from the suburbs of Melbourne. Sri Lankan director Vithanage’s With You, Without You (Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka) is set in post-civil war Sri Lanka and is a co-production with India. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s produced Aiyya, directed and written by Sachin Kundalkar, is about a girl who falls in love after catching scent of a man.