The Jengaburu Curse: Masterpiece With Odisha As Its Heart

When the last tree of the earth is gone, what will you do with your money and power? asks Priyambada Das, the protagonist of ‘The Jengaburu Curse’, a web series streaming on the OTT platform SonyLiv. Ferociously, Priyambada (brilliantly played by Faria Abdullah with her expressional intensity and unconventional acting skills) asks this question to a crooked mining mafia (portrayed by veteran `Nasser whose cold-faced acting has redefined the role of a villain). The story ends with a fierce battle and leaves the audience to ask a series of questions.

What will be the future of the earth and humanity when there are no hills, no trees, no tribals, no stream, and no compassion?

When will the all-swallowing greed of a few is going to end?

How long we are going to torture our own people branding them as Naxals or anti-development activists who are struggling to protect the earth from greedy corporates?

When will we understand that mining and money trials are no mere local politics for the betterment of the society? Rather, it’s more about a global Nexus of greed and conspiracies to blacken the future of the human species.

After watching seven episodes of “The Jengaburu Curse” the audience is bound to go through a sea of questions that may upset the entertainment-seeking and easygoing audience of OTT, which is otherwise infamous for explicit content on sex, violence, and four-lettered dialogues. In that context, this series is quite a different ball game that is going to revolutionise the content side of the OTT. This cinematic narrative is going to make you a questioning political soul which is unusual, but that’s real. That’s the drama provoking the darkest reality of our time.

Acclaimed filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda’s “The Jengaburu Curse” is projected as a Cli-Fi-thriller, but in reality, it’s an authentic social history of civilisational peril. In a dramatic setup, the series talks about mining, the money trail, tribal struggle against mining lobbies, state apathy, and atrocities, and above all, the question of ethnicity. This series is one of the boldest statements in an art form to register the human protest against corporate greed.

The series is a superbly crafted cinematic narrative. The storyline is gripping, intoxicating and sustains anxiety up to the last. The canvas of this web series is wide, expanded, and global. As a filmmaker, Nila Madhab is trying to find out the root of exploitation through layers of systems. He has identified key players in a crime (illegal mining and exploitation of tribals) and brought all of them as characters. It’s a thrilling psychological war between the criminals and the crusaders. On OTT, the crime and politics of our time is common as basic content but Jengaburu is bolder and solidly stands by the Bondria tribe (an imaginary ethnic group in the web series.)

Cinematography is a kind of chronicle of Odisha’s life, beauty, and social reality. The visual span of the series goes from London to Myanmar but captured Odisha in its totality. This series will be treated as the first authentic visual history of Odisha.

Delightfully, the series is streaming with Odia dubbing. Somehow, Nila Madhab has used a kind of Odiaised Hindi, which itself is historic. From the Odia point of view, this is the biggest projection of Odisha in a highly professional visual platform.

The Jengaburu Curse is a class act of cinema: a true mark of artistic excellence.