MAZHAR KAMRAN’S debut film Mohandas is selected for screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival

 

AFTER playing cinematographer for several films like Satya, Mast and Jhankar Beats, Mazhar Kamran has now turned to direction, something he wanted to do ever since he stepped into the industry. And even as the film got released in May (pushed forward because of the IPL and elections), it’s gone on to become the only Indian film to be screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

The film Mohandas will be screened thrice in the New Directors section amidst some big names from Hollywood and across the world such as Robert Redford and Francis Ford Coppola. 

 

Mohandas was also recently selected as one of the 12 fiction films from 13 countries that were represented in Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland. And then the jury of Innsbruck fest in Austria was so impressed by the film that they extended an immediate invitation to Mazhar Kamran for Mohandas. In this festival, only five films from World Cinema are invited in the competition category.

 

Mohandas is the story of young man from a remote part of the country who lands a mining job but realises that someone else is already working there in his name. Kamran says, “It’s a story about theft of identity of a man but it’s also about a lot of other things-snatching someone’s rights, the role of judiciary, the media and administration in such situations.”

 

CASTING CAPERS

 

The cast includes like Sonali Kulkarni, Nakul Vaid, Sushant Singh and Sharbani Mukherji who is acting after a long gap. Ask him why he decided to make a small film without any star power and he says, “The script is rooted in the present day and is hard hitting. So I didn’t need a big budget or the flamboyance of a star. I needed some lesser known innocent face to tell this story.”