Bhubaneswar: “Kalira Atita,” internationally acclaimed Odia director Nila Madhab Panda’s debut film in his mother tongue is all set to be screened at the 12th Chicago Asian Film Festival from September 25 to October 2, 2021, and will also release on the OTT platform on September 3 on MX Player and MUBI.
The film has been doing the festival circuit in UK, Norway and Australia, after eventually bowing out of the Oscar’s race.
It is yet another milestone by the director of award-winning films such as “Kadvee Hawa” on the nature-driven vagaries faced by poor farmers and ‘Halkaa” about open defecation-free India.
“Kalira Atita” or yesterday’s past, is about the rising sea levels induced by climate change and is influenced by the frequent cyclones that ravage his home state of Odisha. It is a story of Saatbhaya, a cluster of seven villages, in coastal Odisha that have been swallowed by the rising sea.
“In 2006, I got an UK environmental film scholarship and started making a documentary at Satavaya (seven brothers), Kendrapara, Odisha. Out of seven villages in Satavaya, more than three were swallowed by the Bay of Bengal. When I started talking about climate change and its impact on these villages, barely anyone took me seriously. Fifteen years on, none of the villages could survive as the sea gobbled up Satavaya entirely. I see my films as prophetic – the incidents we discovered through our research were scary. These chilling facts were highlighted later by UN officials as well. Initiating this important conversation all over the world through my film is what I see as success,” the filmmaker Times of India.
Ironically, it took only 35 days to shoot the story of 13 years and put it in a film format. Panda had been keeping track of the village and areas around it since 2005-06 when he first visited it. There were only three villages remaining at that time. But in a decade, the entire civilisation there got wiped out. A telling symbol was the handpump from which he drank water more than a decade ago. It no longer exists because it has submerged in the sea. This was enough to stir the director. He decided fictionalise it into a film deviating from his trademark documentary style.
The best part is that Panda did not prepare a script for the film. Instead, he chose to build around the character of the protagonist played by Pitobash Tripathy.
Panda feels we have lost enough time in just talking about climate change. The time has now to engage everyone in a conversation to face the harsh reality.
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