Bhubaneswar: Odisha-born filmmaker Lipika Singh Darai’s experimental creative documentary ‘Night and Fear’ will have its world premiere on Thursday at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), the Netherlands, in its 52nd edition, which is taking place from January 25 to February 5.
The film is competing in the Ammodo Tiger competition for short films. “There will be three screenings in various cinemas and tickets are already on sale. This is probably the first time an Odia documentary is competing in the Tiger competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Tiger competition is a highly competitive section to which hundreds of films get submitted from across the world. Decades back, Susant Mishra’s two feature fiction films were in Official Selection in 1991 and 2001,” Lipika stated in a press release.
In the last two-three years, documentary films from India are winning at the top film festivals of the world like Sundance, and Cannes and are also getting nominations at the Oscars. Films like Night of Knowing Nothing (winner of Canne’s top documentary award), All that Breathes (this year’s Oscar selection), and Writing with Fire (last year’s Oscar selection) are some examples, she said.
Talking about the documentary, the filmmaker said that it is a personal essay on some parts of the untold layers of her films and her experiences in making those. “I have experienced many shades of darkness and fear, sometimes through the characters and sometimes through the spaces. At some point, the residual of the generated materials for films evoked their own distinct narrative,” she said.
It is the second volume of ‘Kankee O Saapo’ (Dragonfly and Snake) which received the National Film Award (Rajat Kamal) for Best Narration in 2014, she added.
