THE BUCKINGHAM MURDERS

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Every 10 minutes a child goes missing in India. It’s an alarming statistic for a country with more than 1 billion people. A reaction to this epidemic has been vigilantism, hyperbolized in the media as WhatsApp lynchings. Unfortunately, those who’ve been wrongfully accused, are tragically murdered by angry mobs intent on delivering justice for child trafficking.

It’s this dreadful reality that’s explored in the fictional film Stolen. “My film is a tempered down version of what is going on with this phenomenon,” says director Karan Tejpal, who’s boldly making his feature film debut.

It was the 2018 incident in the district of Karbi Anglong in the northeastern state of Assam that struck Karan. Fake news was spreading over WhatsApp that child kidnappers were in the area. Nilotpal Das, a 29-year-old musician, and Abhijit Nath, a 30-year-old businessman, were walking back from fishing when an angry mob mistakenly identified them as the criminals. They were then heinously beaten to death with the mob recording the entire incident. It’s been over five years since the horrific incident, and the courts of Assam have yet to sentence those responsible for the execution of Nilotpal and Abhijit.

“Seeing that video, I can never unsee it,” Karan painfully says. “And really that was the seed [of the film] because those people, those two young men were like me, like us; they were regular folks.”

Karan’s film takes a grounded approach through this prism with two brothers, Gautam, a businessman played by Abhishek Banerjee and Raman, a photographer, played by Shubham. Gautam is picking up his brother at a train station, when a woman named Jhumpa, played by Mia Maelzer, has her infant child kidnapped, whilst she was waiting on the station platform. The empathetic Raman compels Gautam to get involved to help Jhumpa and the local police chase down the culprit. What happens over the next day changes them all forever.

Stolen is an expertly paced 90-minutes of unsettling thrills that continuously unfolds gratifying plot twists and peels back layers revealing dimensional characters, whilst exploring the societal context that shaped them. Stolen has the DNA of an indie and delivers like a mainstream thriller.

“It’s been a very hard space to make this film and especially with a first time director,” says producer Gaurav Dhingra. “But for me, that’s the opportunity I see. A first time director is a way to say that there are new voices.”

Gaurav and his Jungle Book Studio production company was working with Karan on a series of projects, mainly advertising related, but then one day he came in with this idea and they decided to pursue it. Although this is Karan’s feature directorial debut, which he is a co-screenwriter, it’s not his first full length screenplay. He was previously selected into India’s NFDC Screenwriter’s Lab with his first feature script, Sunset Club, as well as being selected into the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab with his second, Nisar. 

Writing Stolen took about two years, which Karan was the primary along with Gaurav and a third writer, Dr. Swapnil Salkar “Agadbumb” ⎯ a regular collaborator of Gaurav for the last decade that has a day job as a doctor.

“Three is the toughest number to work with in writers.  It’s kind of complicated.  Two is better than three … but, you know, it worked out for us,” Karan explains. “A little later in the project, Swapnil took over the primary writer’s role when we started to do dialogues. He has a good gift of gab where dialogues come in.”

Once the screenplay was in its best shape, the team sent it to Abhishek who signed on immediately after two days of reading the script.

“I got the script, I knew it was good. Usually I say yes to a script like that. If I’m taking time, that means I’m not liking the script,” Abhishek explains over a cup of tea after the film’s screening at the BFI London Film Festival.

At the time, the characters of Gautam and Raman were written as friends, but Abhishek felt this needed to be changed to where they’re brothers, “in order to get that emotional quotient higher,” Abhishek says.

During this early phase, Karan constantly stressed that the chemistry between the two characters was paramount. So that’s how Shubham became involved, because, “there’s no other guy I can have a great chemistry apart from [Shubham],” Abhishek explains.

Shubham and Abhishek had known each for over 20 years. “We graduated from the same college, and we used to do theatre together ⎯ we did a lot of plays together,” says Shubham.

As Shubham modestly details their history, Abhishek sitting next to him quickly interjects, “We were kind of the stars in our theatre group!” It was certainly the script and Abhishek that got him to commit, but for Shubham though, what really motivated him was Karan’s vision for the film.

“I think it’s not just about the script ⎯  because I’ve seen a lot of good scripts, which when they’re made, it’s not good,” Shubham says. “When I had a chat with Karan, after reading the script, that actually excited me because the way he was thinking to shoot the film was really exciting. He was thinking of shooting the whole film in one shot only. So, I thought, ‘oh, here’s a director who’s taking risks.’”

As the production rolled along, doing it all in one-take was abandoned as it would be staggeringly complex and a detriment to the mosaic the team finally created as the film unfolds between multiple locations, riveting chases and a ticking compression of time from night to day. Complementing this early vision though, many scenes play out in long takes, which don’t even appear so, as the dialogue and acting are so gripping.

Rounding off the emotional magnitude of the story is the character of Jhumpa played by Mia. Originally written to be an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh, it was Mia’s input that led to making Jhumpa indigenous from the tribal areas between Jharkhand and Bengal. It was Mia who thought Jhumpa should speak a very specific dialect of Bengali and would switch to it as necessary throughout the film.

“As an actor, as a performer, [Mia’s], somebody who gets under the skin of her character. So she did a lot of personal research that then I had access to,” Karan explains. “She went and met surrogate mothers.  She went and met moms who had their children lost. And via her, I had access to that material because all of those ladies were so much more open [with talking to another] woman. So Mia was really an integral part in building out Jhumpa.”

With the cast and crew set, the production embarked on a tight 26 day shooting schedule in January 2023. As most of the film takes place at night and the early morning hours, they had very short windows to film because by 9:00 am, India has the blazing sun out and racing towards its midday peak.

“We were making an indie film, so things were falling apart ⎯ not in one department,” Abhishek says. “Every department!” Shubham stresses.

“We were having fun with it. And that’s the best thing about working with your best buddy, or people who you have a camaraderie with,” Abhishek says. “That even the struggles, they seem to be obstacles, but basically, it becomes like an adventure … But we were having fun with it. And then we get calls from Venice, BFI, and that feels great. I don’t think we remember any of the challenges now.”

The film was shot in and around Pushkar, which is just under 100 miles southwest of the Rajasthan capital city of Jaipur. Although it was filmed there, all of the villages, streets and train stations mentioned in the film are fabricated.

“It’s kind of giving you the texture of Rajasthan, of course with the language, and, you know,  you feel like you’re in a desert kind of a space,” Gaurav says. “But we didn’t want to [be specific]. This story can be anywhere in India. That was the whole idea.”

Once production wrapped, they were racing to get a cut submitted into the Venice Film Festival by the May deadline. “We just sent in a rough cut that even I wasn’t happy with, honestly,” Karan says. “But we had to at least try.”

Then a month later in June, the curators sent an email asking if they had an updated cut from what they submitted. “We sent it to them, and in the next two hours we were selected,” Gaurav says.

Elation to the nth degree is how everyone in the cast and crew felt with Stolen’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and then selected into BFI London Film Festival. “I was so overwhelmed, I literally had to drink a bottle of champagne to calm myself down,” Karan vividly recalls.

The filmmakers are now touring the world showcasing the remarkable achievement of independent Indian cinema. Stolen will be made widely distributed in 2024.

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FINDING HOPE THROUGH DESPAIR

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THE WAR AT HOME

 Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi details the journey to his feature debut Butterfly Vision

Words Sean Stillmaker

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Indigenous filmmaking

Behind the scenes of the world’s first film completely casted by Indigenous people who’re also first time actors 

Words Sean Stillmaker 

Imagine a story of a teenage girl who mistakenly gets pregnant. Instead of becoming a mother, she’d rather have an abortion, but access to this healthcare is heavily restricted. 

This story certainly sounds like one you’d hear in the modern world today, since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the US or there’s 22 countries prohibiting abortion under any circumstance, including when a woman’s life or health is at risk.

It’s a globally accessible story, which award winning Indian filmmaker Priyanandanan imperatively used as the narrative set within an Indigenous community in his latest film Dhabari Quruvi. 

Priyanandanan pushed creative boundaries even further by only casting Indigenous people in the film, all of whom are not professional nor trained actors. Shot completely on location within the Attappadi reserve area of India’s southern state of Kerala, Dhabari Quruvi is the first film in history to be completely casted by Indigenous people. 

After the film’s premiere at the International Film Festival of India in Goa, Priyanandanan exclusively sat with us to elaborate further on the yearslong journey in creating this cinematic masterpiece.

“This is an imaginary story, but this is something that is happening in Kerala amongst tribes; these types of things are happening,” Priyanandanan says in Malayalam that was graciously passed through his translator. “However, in every part of the world, women are having this issue.” 

The film’s title derives from mythology; Dhabari Quruvi is a sparrow from a folklore tale whose father remains unknown. As so, the film follows 15-year-old Paappa, sensationally played by Meenakshi, who mysteriously becomes pregnant. She has dreams and ambitions to pursue higher education, become an English school teacher and see the outer world. 

If Paappa were to become a mother, she would be married off and her dreams would never come to fruition. So she begins her journey to find a solution amongst restrictive abortion access, without letting her family and village elders know she’s pregnant. During her quest she’s assisted by her best friend Raami, played by Syamini.

The Indigienous community portrayed are the Irula people, which has an approximate population of 200,000 and is listed as one of the 75 Particularly Vulnerable Groups (PVG) by India’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs. The film is entirely spoken in the Irula language, which is classified as an endangered language by UNESCO. 

In order to secure their participation, Priyanandanan spent months living and working with the community. “There is a high tradition of art for them,” Priyanandanan says. “So I joined with them, stayed there, did workshops with them, and then we decided together to make this film.” 

For many of the Indigenous actors working on the production, many of them have never seen a film before, Priyanandanan says. They were, however, in full support of the film and story. This was certainly evident with the Indigenous cast who attended the premiere and were beyond elated by the standing ovation they received. 

“Everyone was very positive and they wanted to see this story,” Priyanandanan says. “They are very generous and you can see that with them here celebrating the film.”

Regarding working with first-time actors, Priyanandanan casually remarks the process being very easy going. “All people are artists,” he says. “You just need to know where to find them.” 

Irula communities are spread over three southern Indian states; they are mainly located in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka (the film is set in the Attappadi reserve area of Kerala, which is on the eastern border with Tamil Nadu). 

The name Irula means being capable of finding one’s path in the darkness, which is a key characteristic of the Irulas. Historically Irulas were an agrarian society. Depending on the soil and environment, paddy, raggi, dhal, plantains, chillies and turmeric were grown as well as rearing and vending goats and poultry.

Originally forest dwellers, they were forced to migrate by land developers. Some have settled near public bodies of water in temporary structures or near urban centers. For livelihood, they’ve since diversified into a trade that has received global recognition. 

They are renowned snake catchers and hunters of other animals. In India they catch snakes in order to extract and sell their venom to medical labs to create an antidote. Irulas are so proficient at this, the US state of Florida hired Irula snake catchers to come to the Everglades to catch pythons who are an invasive species to the ecosystem. 

There are 705 Scheduled Tribes in India, totaling an approximate 105 million people amongst India’s 1.2 billion population (about 8% Indigenous). Amongst the Scheduled Tribes, 75 are classified as PVG, which means the Inigenous community: uses a pre-agricultural level of technology, has a low level of literacy, has an economic backwardness and a declining or stagnant population. All of these characteristics are present in Dhabari Quruvi.

Paappa’s mother, played by Muruki, is a single parent. She’s one of five wives who never sees her husband nor has Paappa ever known her father. To make ends meet, she grows and sells grain alcohol. When she goes to sell the alcohol, men regularly take advantage of her, which Paappa tragically witnesses. It’s a life cycle Paappa could succumb too, if she became a mother. 

This life path is reflected throughout the film with Paappa’s childhood friend, Muruki, played by Anu Prasobhini. Once a promising student with goals, Muruki’s pregnancy shattered her dreams, took her out of school and became a farmer raising a child alone. 

The Irula people have a symbiotic relationship with Earth. They are natural specialists in traditional herbal medicine and healing practices. Supporting natural plant medicine is the fact that India is one of the most biodiverse countries; it accounts for about 8% of the world’s recorded species — home to about 96,000 species of animals, 47,000 species of plants and nearly half the world’s aquatic plants. 

In the film, reverence to plants and Earth is reflected throughout as well as being the abortion options Paappa must pursue. To go to the urban hospital for an abortion, Paappa would need permission from her parent, which she would not get nor be able to afford. Sympathetic to her plight, the local medicine woman would provide Paappa with natural remedies, but she mystically passes away. So the narrative thrusts Paappa to pursue other natural means available or die trying. 

Now that the film is out in the world, a global audience can identify with this story and be mesmerized by the outstanding craftsmanship of the filmmakers and Indigenous community involved. For Priyanandanan, he’s particularly proud of the work’s impact on the daily lives of the people. 

“This is a particular place in Kerala, it is a remote place, and from that community they are creating a feeling, we are building artists and that is needed,” Priyanandanan concludes.

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The Storyteller

Words Sean Stillmaker

Lost loves, work/life imbalances, intellectual property infringement — these are universal themes, but they only transcend the test of time when in the hands of true storytellers. Satyajit Ray, the renowned auteur filmmaker, literary writer and multidisciplinary designer from Kolkata in West Bengal, is one of those masterful yarn spinners. 

All of the above mentioned themes are present in his literary work Golpo Boliye (Bengali for The Storyteller). The piece was part of a series of 15 short stories published in 1985 that follows the character Tarini Khuro (Bengali for respected uncle).

Satyajit has always been a leading inspiration for Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, an acclaimed director, writer and actor of Hindi and Marathi films and tv productions. When Ananth secured the rights to adapt The Storyteller for the screen, he thought it would be an overnight done deal. Instead, it was three years of perseverance. 

Good things come to those who wait, as a storyteller might say, which is certainly true after premiering The Storyteller in India at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. Before the projectors rolled at the INOX theatre, Ananth elaborated on the root of his inspiration for the film in front of the sold out show. 

“When I first read the story, it was translated for me from Bengali to Hindi and I realised that Ray had done a very clever thing; he had brought a Bengali who couldn’t speak Gujarati and a Gujarati who couldn’t understand Bengali together. So the common means of communication was Hindi. This film could only be made in Hindi not Bengali,” says Ananth. 

“So I thought, here was an opportunity to try and emulate the great master from one of his own stories. It must have been in a moment of madness and absolute, one would say, obsession with Ray that I decided to do it, and I followed it up with almost fanatic enthusiasm,” says the ever so energetically and spiritually youthful 72-year-old director. 

Tarini Khuro the aged bachelor has become Tarini Ranjan Bandhopadhyay the retired widower in the film adaptation. The cinematic Tarini is still an engrossing storyteller, where we see throughout his life that friends and family would clamour him to sit down, pull out his ‘magic wand,’ which is a cigarette, and regale them with a ‘Tarini Tale.’

Tarini is exceptionally played by the Hindi actor with over 250 credits, Paresh Rawal, who expressively portrays the character with an appropriately delightful balance of pensive thought and sharp wit. 

In the film, we’re immediately introduced to the character upon his retirement. Tarini is a man who’s had 73 jobs over his life and is now leaving Amrit Publishers in Kolkata where he’s worked for the last 13 months, one of his longest stretches in one place. It’s these life experiences in various vocations that fuel his knowledge to create such captivating stories. We’re also later told a healthy diet of fish helps because it keeps the mind sharp. 

Only days go by before Tarini becomes restless sitting at home. Whether it’s fate or chance, he comes across a job opportunity for a storyteller in the northwestern state of Gujarat. As regret swirls in his head that he never took enough holidays with his wife before she passed away, he takes it as a sign that he could fulfill that wish, whilst staying occupationally active.  

The approximate 1,300 mile journey from Kolkata to Ahmedabad takes just over a day by train. When Tarini arrives for the job interview, he is stunned that his services would be applied to a successfully aged bachelor rather than to a family with small children. 

The wealthy entrepreneur is Ratan Garodia whose business is cotton exports. He’s in need of a storyteller for himself because he suffers from insomnia, Ratan claims. Tarini quickly fires back that it’s a condition he cannot personally relate to: ‘it’s a rich person disease, a side-effect of capitalism.’ 

The character of Ratan is played by the internationally acclaimed stage and screen Indian actor Adil Hussain. After the premiere in Goa, Adil elaborated on his thoughts and creative work at the film’s press conference. 

“I’m proud to be part of this because of every sense of the word — story —the way it has been told, the way it has been written. Generally, most of the films we see that are made in our part of the world, they are poor in literature. And that needs to be worked upon in film writing. I think that is the weakest part in Indian films,” Adil says. 

And so when the script arrived for him to read, jubilant elation could be inferred. “When I read the script, it felt very, very well written and I could smell Satyajit Ray speaking through the words and through the scenes.”

When it came to Satyajit’s original short story, Adil had read it when he was young, going back 30 years ago, he said. However, after being cast as Ratan, he was told not to revisit the original text. 

 “I had been asked not to. I remember when I asked Ang Lee, when I did his Life of Pi, ‘should I read the book?’ And he said, ‘please don’t.’ A film version of a story is so different than what is written. It’s a different language. It’s a different way of expressing a story,” Adil says.  

Literature is front and foremost throughout Ananth’s film, which was masterfully adapted by Kireet Khurana. Not only does the script deliver succinctly profound witticism in playful dialogue, but literature in its various forms play a central role. 

Ratan has an extensive library, but confesses he has no time to read. The only book he does read is his business accounting book, but he basks in the thought that perhaps through possessing a collection, the knowledge will somehow transfer. 

It’s near his book collection that Tarini musses at a painting, Pablo Piccaso’s ’37 surrealist The Weeping Woman. Although Ratan’s wealthy stature might be able to afford the original, the painting he confesses is ‘a copy.’ Although innocently said at the time, the choice of words echoes ominously after the film’s climax, as does the famous Picasso quote that, “good artists borrow, but great artists steal.” 

Whilst working in Ahmedabad, Tarini befriends a librarian, wonderfully played by Tannishtha Chatterjee. Her character is a pivotal fulcrum in the third act setting off unexpected twists related to plagiarism and karma in the remaining two acts. 

At the press conference she expanded upon her artistic ethos and laughingly acknowledged her flights of fancy regarding intellectual property ranging from storytelling to music and beyond. 

“As an artist, I feel the world should be free,” Tannishtha says. “I know the producers may not agree because they put in so much money that way. Cinema is a very expensive art form, or a form of expression where commerce is involved a lot, but art is to communicate; it’s to have a dialogue.”

Immediately upon making the statement, Tannishtha laughed whilst looking at producer’s Suchhanda Chatterjee bewildered expression. Suchhanda and Shubha Shetty of Quest Films were responsible for the years long campaign of finding the partners to collaborate on this journey in bringing the exquisite film to life. 

“All credit to the director. He had loved the story and went ahead and bought the rights from Satyajit Ray and afterwards approached us. We just saw the story and obviously what is there not to love about the story,” Shubha says. 

Suchhanda went further elaborating on how every studio turned them down until years later they found an eager partner with Jio Studios and were finally able to let the cameras roll. With The Storyteller now out in the world, Suchhanda reflected on the film’s concluding message. 

“If you see the last scene of our film, it is told that how can you compare a storyteller and a storywriter. Who’s bigger? Nobody’s bigger; they’re equal, maybe… it was beautifully done and yet there was a strong message to the plagiarism,” Suchhanda says.

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remember chol soo lee

Words Sean Stillmaker 

A wrongfully convicted Korean immigrant who was put on death row and a crusading investigative journalist who writes a series of stories that launches an entire movement of resistance by Asian Americans is the nut graf, as we like to say in journalism-speak, of the documentary Free Chol Soo Lee.

Although this story poignantly sounds contemporary, the events unfolding in the documentary began in San Francisco 1973 when Chol Soo Lee was arrested for a murder he did not commit.

For the Asian American filmmakers and award-winning journalists, Julie Ha and Eugene Yi, the story of Chol and the movement it ignited was something unknown to them growing up, and what compelled them to make this documentary so it’s not forgotten or marginalized to a footnote.

“That’s another big reason why we made this film because it’s not even taught in Asian American studies at universities in America,” Julie says. “Eugene and I, we’ve always shared this passion to tell Asian American stories that are complicated with nuance and depth. It did feel like it was our generation’s responsibility to make sure this story didn’t get forgotten and buried in history.”

At the corner of Pacific and Grant in San Francisco’s Chinatown on 3 June 1973 a Chinese American with ties to the Wah Ching gang, Yip Yee Tak, was gunned down with a revolver shooting .38 special ammunition.

The police only interviewed white witnesses who were tourists that described the killer as a clean-shaven Asian man of approximate 5’10” height and 150 pounds weight. Showing the witnesses an outdated photo of Chol (evidence which was later buried), the witnesses positively identified him as the suspect. So a few days later police arrested the 21-year-old Chol who had a mustache and stood at 5’2” weighing 120 pounds. At the time of arrest, he had a revolver with .38 special ammo, but the casings did not match the murder weapon (more evidence that would be buried).

Just over a year later in 1974, Chol was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In October 1977, while serving his sentence at Deuel Vocational Institution, Chol was involved in a fatal altercation with a white neo-nazi Morrison Needham. It was self defense for Chol, but a further trial in 1979 resulted in another guilty verdict of first-degree murder that carried a mandatory death penalty with execution by gas chamber.

On 22 November 1977, Korean journalist Kyung Won Lee (commonly known as K.W. Lee, no relation to Chol) reached out to Chol regarding his situation. As we see in the documentary, K.W. explains his affinity for Chol who he sees as a victim of injustice, systemic racism and a vicious cycle of American institutions perpetuating ignorance and insensitivity.

The crusade began with a two-part series Lost in a Strange Culture and Alice-in-Chinatown Murder Case published 29 and 30 January 1978, respectively, in the Sacramento Union. Writing a series of stories, K.W.’s journalism inspired activists across the state, nation and globe to the “Free Chol Soo Lee” movement. It was not just young radicals protesting either — it was multi-ethnic, multi-generational and multi-occupational from hourly laborers to prominent entrepreneurs, all of whom committed nearly a decade of activism to free Chol Soo Lee. 

The campaign raised over $120,000 for Chol’s court appeals. By September 1978, the Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee hired the “Chicago Seven” defense attorney Leonard Weinglass to work on Chol’s behalf (alongside Tony Serra and Stuart Hanlon). By 1983, Chol was acquitted of Yip’s murder and had the conviction of Morrison’s murder reversed. After a decade of incarceration, he was released from prison in August 1983.

Sadly, at the age of 62, Chol passed away in 2014. It was at his funeral, which Julie attended, where the seed was firmly planted to do a documentary on Chol.

In 1990 at the age of 18, Julie was interning at Korea Times, a publication founded by K.W., whom by this point was highly distinguished with a plethora of local, state and national awards for his 30-plus years of investigative reporting. “That’s when I first learned about the case. I was inspired to be a journalist after meeting K.W.,” she says.

Julie then distinctly recalls the heaviness at Chol’s funeral: “K.W. Lee stood up at one point, and he was in such anguish, and he said, ‘why is this story still underground after all of these years — a landmark Asian American social justice movement that overturned two murder convictions, the impossible in the American justice system, and freed this man from prison! Why don’t people know about this case?’”

Eugene had known about the case through Julie as both worked together, Eugene as a writer and Julie editor-in-chief at the magazine KoreAm Journal, a publication covering Asian American culture, which ceased printing in 2015 and subsequently re-branded to Character Media. In 2015, Eugene was working as a video editor for the New York Times and felt his skills could enhance a project.

“There was always a way we collaborated that brought out sensitivity and nuance to the complicated existence of Asian Americans,” Eugene says. “I was really missing being able to tell those kinds of stories. I wanted to combine the work that I had done with editing with telling the kinds of stories that we felt needed to be told.”

And so October 2015 Julie and Eugene began work on the documentary, which took six years to complete, “a wonderful rhyme with the movement,” Eugene adds, as it was six years from K.W.’s introduction in ’77 to Chol’s release in ’83.

As we see in the documentary, the 70s and 80s as well as every step of the timeline are vividly pictured with vast archival footage from videos, photos and news interviews at the time, which is then juxtaposed with contemporary interviews of those involved looking back at themselves some 40 years ago.

Much of this archive was provided by those involved whom K.W. introduced Eugene and Julie to, which speaks volumes towards its importance with the historical record. “Archival footage doesn’t archive itself; someone has to make that choice, someone has to decide that it’s worth preserving for future generations seeing and make it part of history,” Eugene says. “Our film wouldn’t exist without their work.”

With this extensive material available, the next hurdle of making the documentary come to life was the participation of Chol. Since the documentary’s creation began after his passing, the filmmakers were blessed with Chol’s actual words.

Throughout the film, a narration is provided that is taken from Chol’s 2017 memoir, posthumously published, Freedom Without Justice. The power of Chol’s own words is extraordinary, but the brilliance is conveyed as spoken by Sebastian Yoon.

Su Kim, one of Free Chol Soo Lee’s producers, discovered Sebastian at an event he was representing, the 2019 four-part documentary series College Behind Bars. The documentary follows incarcerated men and women striving to earn college degrees through the Bard Prison Initiative, Sebastian being one of them.

Sebastian is a Korean American who at the age of 16, was sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter in the first degree, charged as an adult because at the time teenagers were still charged as adults in New York state. The documentary showcases his journey to earn a college degree whilst incarcerated.

“Su was so moved at how honest and open he was. She also felt that there was something in him that reminded her of Chol Soo Lee,” Julie says. After watching the documentary series, “[Eugene and I] were blown away ourselves.”

And so, after reaching out to Sebastian, he was intrigued by the filmmakers offer and watched an early cut of the film. “He was moved to tears after watching it; he felt a personal resonance with Chol Soo Lee’s story,” Julie says.

Another striking narrative throughout the film is the insight from Jeff Adachi. He was a student that was impassioned to be an activist for Chol Soo Lee, even helping pen a hit song, The Ballad of Chol Soo Lee, a folk-rock tune evoking the best of Bob Dylan that would help the movement go viral.

It was the activist work here that led Jeff to pursue a legal career spanning 30-plus years working in San Francisco’s public defender’s office. “If you look at his life, he was so directly affected by helping Chol Soo Lee,” Julie says. San Francisco is the only city in California that elects their public defender. Jeff won the 2002 election to be chief attorney, which he served for 15 years until he passed away in 2019. Free Chol Soo Lee is dedicated to Jeff.

Balancing their day jobs, families and constantly fundraising is all in a day’s work of an independent filmmaker, Eugene and Julie express. But now as it’s complete and Free Chol Soo Lee is out in the universe again, the filmmakers feel a sense of relief that they created a preservation of this great Asian American legacy.

“We’re not used to seeing Asian Americans in these roles,” Julie says. “You have to see it and hear it to realize that this happened and just to feel that emotion, texture and impact.”

For Eugene, Free Chol Soo Lee provides, “images of strength, of resistance, resilience and their power,” he says. “It’s able to give us roots, to fight against stereotype.”

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Joyland

Behind the scenes of the first film from Pakistan selected into Festival de Cannes

Words Sean Stillmaker 

A job opportunity sends Haider across the Pakistani city of Lahore. As he patiently waits to try out as a background dancer, a spark is ignited when the transgender performer Bibi takes the stage of the erotic dance theatre. 

It’s a pivotal moment that set’s the film’s trajectory. Can Haider make the transition from being a house husband to the breadwinner? Can his marriage survive? In a patriarchal society where appearances are everything and LGBTQ+ are criminalized, can this forbidden love between Haider and Bibi blossom?

Clashes of culture and challenging taboos combine to make a wonderfully crafted film in Joyland, which after 75 years, is the first film from Pakistan selected to compete in the programme at Festival de Cannes. 

After receiving its world premiere, to a record standing ovation no less, Joyland co-star Sarwat Gilani basks in elation as she responds to each of my questions thoughtfully inside a French flat near the croisette. 

“For a country like Pakistan to make a movie which represents and puts so much light on a transgender’s life, I hope that it changes something back home where people do realize these are the kind of people who can represent Pakistan on a global platform like Alina did (actress Alina Khan playing the role of Bibi). For her community, this is a huge step,” says Sarwat.

Joyland begins by intimately introducing us to this average Pakistani household. Haider (Ali Junejo) and his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) are childless and live with Haider’s brother Saleem (Sohail Sameer) and wife Nucchi (Sarwat), their kids and the brothers’ father Abba (Salmaan Peerzada), the family patriach.

Action immediately starts with Nucchi going into labor that produces another girl, which causes much consternation to Abba who then chastizes Haider and Mumtaz to grow the family and bless it with a boy. 

Rich in its layered narrative reflecting the struggles within contemporary Pakistani society, Sarwat’s character Nucchi represents the traditional norm of women — Nucchi is a stay at home mother responsible for the nine person household.  

“[The film] talks about the pressure a woman goes through in a normal household in Pakistan and the kind of patriarchal society that we have where it’s so important to give birth to a boy to be acceptable, otherwise it’s so incomplete no matter what you do for the home, for the in-laws, there’s a constant pressure to give birth to a boy,” Sarwat says. 

Pursing a non-traditional life is at the heart of Haider and Mumtaz’s relationship where he is  happy to be at home, while she is happy working as a beautician for brides. This is of course inverted when Haider accepts the job as a background dancer for Bibi. Out of shame though, he cannot tell his father his true position, he just says he works as a theatre manager. With Haider employed, however, Mumtaz is decreed by Abba to stay at home with Nucchi to help with the household, despite her desire to continue working. 

“I see so many such women around me, whether they come from the highest structure of society, they are expected to stay home no matter how rich they are, no matter what car they have, no matter what their exposures are. They may be from a great university in Pakistan but they’re expected to stay home,” Sarwat says. 

The role of Nucchi is clearly just make believe for Sarwat because the person behind the character are polar opposites. Sarwat is a mother, and despite this, has continued working for over two decades in the industry between films, television, web, modeling and an influencer with 1.8 million Instagram followers. 

“I think in my 20 years of a career, most of the characters I played do represent that mindset where you have to stay at home, you’re the next door neighbor girl, you got to do the norms,” Sarwat says. But off screen, “luckily both my own family and my in-laws are very encouraging of me to work. I’ve also been very responsible as a working person and a mother.”

In addition to acting, Sarwat also founded Art House based in Karachi, which provides educational programing for kids emphasizing art in its curriculum as well as being an ambassador for the Special Olympics. 

It was all of the eclectic material representing contemporary lifestyles inside Joyland’s story that attracted Sarwat, which was written and directed by Saim Sadiq, who is also making his feature film directorial debut. 

“The way it was written was so beautiful. It talked about things that we generally don’t talk about in Pakistan and that is something that really got me hooked on the script, that it was different, and I’m all about different content now.”

Joyland was completely shot in real locations around Lahore and its centrally located neighborhood Gawalmandi, renowned for its food street market. Instrumental to pull this off was Pakistani producer Sarmad Khoosat, where his own personal experience as a filmmaker may come into play. His 2020 film Circus of Life (Zindagi Tamasha) was suspended from release after lobbying by a hardline political group accusing the film of blasphemy since it portrays a struggling cleric. The rest of the film’s producers were made up between the UK and US, such as Ramin Bahrani. 

What truly makes the film magical is the daring portrayal of Bibi by Alina. Audiences first recieved a glimpse of what Joyland was to be as some of its elements, including Alina portraying a transgender dancer, were pioneered in Saim’s 2019 short film Darling, which won a slew of awards for best short at film festivals like Venice and SXSW. 

“Saim’s debut has made the entire nation so proud and there are no words to express the kind of gratitude that I think we should all have for him and his efforts making Joyland come to life,” Sarwat adds as our conversation comes to a close. 

But one thing both herself and the other filmmakers involved never thought possible would be coming to Cannes competing in the Un Certain Regard section of the film festival’s 75th edition when the film wrapped production in November 2021. 

“I think for the entire fraternity it’s a big leap. It’s definitely pushing our boundaries for the artists in Pakistan to do better, do bigger, do different stuff and step out of your comfort zone. And I hope Tv channels and other filmmakers can realize that our market, our audience, is not just in Pakistan but it’s all over the world and that is the audience that we should target every narrative to,” Sarwat says. 

A few days later after its premiere, Joyland won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard of Festival de Cannes.

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FILM REVIEW

ambulance

Words Sean Stillmaker

There are few filmmakers who’s very name attached acts as both a noun and a descriptive adjective of the film. Michael Bay is one of those directors, and Ambulance is his latest film.

The story’s about two brothers who botch a bank robbery, attempt their getaway with hostages in a stolen ambulance and try to thwart police in a high-speed pursuit. This may sound familiar because it’s based off the 2005 low-budget Danish indie Ambulancen.

To Americanize this update, Bay goes big setting it in Los Angeles, having one of the brothers as a military veteran and delivering a full display of his signature style: explosive mayhem, macho testosterone, brazen product placement and absurd reality distortion.

There is an art to delivering this kind of signature and it’s quite refreshing to see it as a stand alone movie with regular people rather than some entry in a superhero franchise, or in Bay’s past, one of his five Transformers films.

Leading off Ambulance is Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as his adoptive brother Will.

Danny grew up to be a criminal, having accomplished 38 bank robberies by this time, whereas Will is a decorated veteran having completed tours in Afghanistan. Bountiful of emotions, it’s unfortunate this wayward dynamic of life choices and impact between brothers is not substantially explored.

For Will consistent gainful employment is a struggle as well as dealing with the bureaucratic system of US Veteran Affairs. His wife is a cancer patient that requires immediate surgery, but because it’s classified as experimental, Will’s medical benefits will not cover the $230,000 bill.

With no other option, he turns to his estranged brother Danny for help looking for a loan, which Danny would give him, but unfortunately all of his funds are tied up in his heist of the century – a $32 million bank robbery that is ready to go as they meet. So the respectable good-hearted Will decides to join his criminally charismatic brother Danny so he can provide for his family.

Danny’s plight as a victim from Veteran Affairs is a realistic catalyst, which starts the film in an emotional heartbreaking moment. Unfortunately, further probing into this trauma or the actual systematic neglect of veterans is abandoned in the script. Due note, this is a real problem where veteran’s disability rating is being arbitrarily altered leaving them with a reduction of 20 to 40 per cent in benefits.

Mr. Bay has always been a propagandist champion of the American military industrial complex, but the Covid-19 pandemic has given way to a new kind of war where the frontline is the medical service.

Bay’s affinity for heroism clearly marks the heart and true protagonist of the film as paramedic Camille “Cam” Thompson played Eiza González. Cam is the paramedic in the ambulance taken hostage alongside her patient, a cop who was shot during the robbery.

Cam is the fully three-dimensional character in the film. She wanted to be a doctor, but drug abuse fueled her drop out. This checkered history relegates her to working for a private ambulance service, which is over-worked, under-staffed and under-paid. She now dedicates herself to the job, known to keep anyone alive for 20 minutes, but leaves little for personal relationships outside of work.

Over Bay’s 15 feature films, they’ve been macho male dominated (with applause as substantial roles both in front and behind the camera were given to people of color). But he’s now increased his inclusivity rating with the character of Cam, as women throughout his films (and many churned out by Hollywood for that matter), are either the hollow love interest or plot device to prop up men.

The script for Ambulance, written by Chris Fedak, has been gestating for over five years, but the fall of 2020 gave way to perfect timing as a vehicle for Bay. It fit with his desire for a quick shoot, staying local to LA and scaled back in scope so as not to be burdened by covid restrictions.

The stripped back essence of Ambulance is definitely a refreshing back to basics for Bay, and it certainly is his most grounded film. To illustrate consider the premise of Bay’s fictional films (those not based on true events or of the Transformer’s franchise): Black man inherits generational wealth from trust fund to become a street cop (Bad Boys), a 60-year-old convict and lab rat battle Marines (The Rock), oil roughnecks become astronauts to save Earth (Armageddon), replicants discover they’re clones and fight to live (The Island), tech billionaire erases himself to start charity deploying global mercenaries (6 Underground).

And so to the true star of the film, Bay, he does not disappoint delivering a thrilling high-speed pursuit with all his characteristic carnage. Always a stellar visualist, a new tool applied is the falling camera.

Reminiscent of the slow and steady shot in Pearl Harbor as the camera attaches itself to a falling bomb, Bay turned to aerial drone specialists LightCraft to capture his vision of randomly dropping the camera from the sky.

Throughout the film, the camera glides in the air and randomly plummets at full speed to catch the action. It’s a shock of adrenaline that matches the narrative, while conjuring the randomness fate bestows upon the patients that pile into an ambulance or the violent hostilities victimizing innocent bystanders.

To further accentuate Bay’s star, he breaks the fourth wall with characters quoting his film The Rock and his dog, Nitro, a 200-pound mastiff makes a hilarious cameo being charioted around in a five-speed Fiat. This certainly isn’t even the most outlandish element in the movie, I chalk that up to Birkenstocks.

The obvious outlandishness though is the entire concept of hours-long, high speed police pursuits. That just does not happen, but we know we’re in a movie. To further reality-check, in today’s financial realm, bank robberies are done by keyboard rather than gun point. However, official FBI crime statistics do indicate a trade still active: there were 2,405 US bank robberies in 2019, with 6 instances involving hostages, and the most robberies occurring in California (273); the pandemic obviously impacted 2020 as there were only 1,500 bank robberies nationwide.

With bank robberies, it’s the FBI who take command of the incident. For some modern nuance in characters, the FBI agent dispatched to the situation is gay – we first meet him in a couple’s counseling session, which he must abruptly exit for the emergency. However, there’s not much further probing into how this character’s sexual orientation impacted his career, which would be ripe in dialogue and development.

All the actors inside Ambulance deliver the intensity to match the thrill ride, but there is only so much one can do with the script they’re given. Bay’s masterful at pulling emotional delivery from actors, which is why he’s worked with a plethora of marquee talent since erupting out of commercials and music videos with his 1995 feature debut Bad Boys.

But Bay can only do with as much as he’s given to work with, and thus it’s the script that has fallen short. All the pieces for great character development and a dialogue on the systematic failings these characters encountered through their sacrifices are there, but instead we’re given a surface level treatment.

The next biggest hurdle is the film’s 2-hour and 13-minute length. This could have been succinctly delivered in 90-minutes. One of the best ways to get there would be completely removing the unnecessary sub-plot involving Latino gangsters. Not only does it add little to the story, it just reinforces offensive stereotypes.

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Two friends

Words Sean Stillmaker 

The word, Dostojee, has no official Bengali dictionary term. It’s simply a slang expression used in rural environments to describe an endearing friendship. And so from the opening of the film, Dostojee, is defined as such and translated for western audiences as “Two Friends.”

Certainly true in two-dimensions: Two Friends is a concise binary summary, appropriate as the title for this 2021 film, but it can also very much describe the relationship between cast and crew, many of whom this is their first time ever working on a film and could only have achieved this feat through the everlasting love of friendship.

“After writing this script, I was looking for a producer for three years,” says director Prasun Chatterjee who is making his feature directorial debut. “Nobody was interested; I was rejected every time. In India, they want to hear your story: ‘first they will ask who’s in your mind, who’s going to star?’ Then, ‘where and how are you going to shoot the song and dance sequence?’ But I have to accept this is the system.”

When one thinks of cinema in India, they think of Bollywood with its output consisting of musical numbers tied to the film to cross-market with the music industry. Although Bollywood is the epicenter of the Indian film industry, responsible for producing an average 1,200 films per year (nearly double of Hollywood), but these films are predominately made in the Hindi language (accessible for the widest of domestic audiences).

Prasun completed the first draft of Two Friends in 2013 that would be delivered in the Bengali language and did not consist of any background music, other than what is heard on a radio or emanating from a distance, which the characters pass through. To add another challenge, it was also integral that he filmed it far away in West Bengal rather than around Bollywood in Mumbai. Nevertheless, Prasun persevered for nearly a decade to bring this personally connected story, and globally accessible narrative, to the screen.

Two Friends is an earnest coming-of-age story between two, 8-year-old boys who are next door neighbors in a remote village of West Bengal, one of India’s 28 states sitting eastward bordering Bangladesh. The story is set between 1992-93 in the aftermath of the Babri Mosque demolition and Bombay bombings.

Although these factual incidences occurred in a 2+ hour flight time away from West Bengal, they very much sent shockwaves throughout the country of approximately 1 billion people, creating a wider gap between Hindus and Muslims, even in the most rural of environments.

These real-life effects are the background of Two Friends, and illuminate the foreground through subtext. The two friends are Palash, son of a Hindu Brahmin, and Safikul, son of a Muslim weaver. The boys are two neighbors who come from families strongly differentiating their religious beliefs, and physically dividing themselves by a bamboo-made fence, but regardless of these adult-like constructs, the boys platonically love each other with a friendship that cannot be contained by societal or parental-made barriers.

Of course to complete this film and make its world premiere at the 2021 BFI London Film Festival, there were barriers the filmmakers had to overcome. Prasun dealt with financial deals collapsing and crowdfunding campaigns falling short before he met producer Prosenjit Ranjan Nath through a mutual friend.

“His intention was pure,” Prosenjit says upon his initial meetings with Prasun. “I’m a businessman, so I can feel something when someone wants to do something,” he says of his gut instinct. Prosenjit made his career in the Kolkata tech industry that offers business solutions to enterprises engaged in digital development and marketing.

Altough Prosenjit did not have any prior filmmaking experience, he was keen to see the blueprint, Prasun vividly recalls over a double espresso at London’s Mayfair Hotel.

“I just wanted to see if there is a script or not,” Prosenjit says sitting across from Prasun in our interview.

“He made a small trailer for the film,” says Prosenjit of his initial introduction to the material. “Somehow, I loved the concept and wanted to meet the director, I wanted to read the script… [Prasun] said he was a first time writer and did not know anything about writing a script… then I said, ‘ok, I can join you, because of the way he was telling the story was so pure…”

With the structure in place, the next most critical step in building was finding the protagonists of the film. Both characters of Palash (played by Asik Shaikh) and Safikul (played by Arif Shaikh) were portrayed by non-actors from under-privileged backgrounds.

“The boys were used to signing off for the day by 8pm,” Prasun writes in the film diary. “It was becoming very difficult for them to stay awake with full energy for prolonged night schedules. We used to put them to sleep, when they did not have scheduled shots, then again, we would wake them up some time before the shot, make them gear up and then proceed.”

One of such instances in the film is a scene where the boys use an innovative technique with a homemade adhesive to catch fireflies at night, applied to cone-like hats that they then wear to emulate knights, and then have a sword fight in the moonlight.

And so, that is very much the essence of Two Friends. We see Palash and Safikul going to markets, visiting a fair, building sandcastles, playing hooky from school and scheming together on how not to do homework. This is a boy’s life.

As time passes religion seeps through from the parents whether that be Hindu prayers at dinner or Safikul gifting Palash some shemai (a sweet dessert) during Eid. For the boys, religious customs is just something their parents make them do, they much rather be out playing.

The narrative of Two Friends is loosely based off the life experiences of Prasun. He comes from a refugee family residing in suburban Kolkata. After losing everything in the communal riots between Hindus and Muslims, his family immigrated to India from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). His uncle was killed in those riots, which is a trauma Prasun’s grandfather never recovered.

“I knew my grandmother had a deep mistrust for the opposite community, but I didn’t hear a single sentence of communal discrimination from my parents,” Prasun writes. “Maybe they also had some scars in their minds, but they didn’t want to inject those thoughts in my little veins.”

In the film, when tragedy befalls on one of the boys, it is an emotional thrust that then propels the narrative on a new path, but it is another element also from Prasun’s past. Growing up, his closest friend sadly passed away from cancer when they were young. The essence of what we then see in the film, “this is the feeling of my personal loss,” Prasun says.

Before the tragedy occurs, the boys catch a caterpillar in order to see it grow into a butterfly. The symbolism of transformation or even reincarnation is touching, but the metamorphosis we see in the film was truly captured by movie magic.

There is no CGI nor was any sort of prop used. The caterpillar into a butterfly was real. During production, they had three butterflies. One flew away, one passed away and the one we see in the film was black with white polka dots. The color was unexpected, but accentuates the film beautifully as the black butterfly is a symbol of transformation and death.

Now that the film is out in the world, what impact its message of love and harmony between religions remains to be seen, but what is certain is that we need more messages like this. 

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