ADITI ROY

A many-layered, moving tale

By Asha P Nair

11th December 2011 11:18 PM

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  (Express News Photo)

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Aditi is just like the movie she has made. Many-layered. Though she very meekly and timidly takes you through the film she has made, the conviction of a first-timer on her long-cherished dream reflects in her eyes. She has not made her first film, she has lived her dream, she vows.
Aditi Roy, the Bengali debutante director whose film is one of the two from India to have made it into the competition segment of the 16th edition of IFFK (the other being ‘Delhi in a Day’ by Prashant Nair) leaves one touched by her unassuming ways. To make a film,’Abhosheshey’ (At the End of it All), which is a pure narration of a mother-son relationship in a rather realistic manner at the age of 30 probably snatches away the last bit of childhood from a woman.
Aditi tells us that she had first listened to the story of Abhosheshey five years back, when she was still a film student. Neel Mitra, the creative producer of the movie, who also wrote the story, had narrated it to her. She knew it was her film, instantly.Three years later, she and Neel sat together writing the screenplay. While Neel was sure the protagonist would be done by none other than actress Roopa Ganguly, Aditi had cast Ankur Khanna for the son’s role in her mind. They fought healthily over the cast, upon the details and about the music.  But it only brought them closer to their dream.
“We were not going to employ any gimmicks. We wanted to tell it plain and clear. And real. So finding a producer was a hard task,’’ Aditi recalls. It was then the duo met Anil B.Dev of Deb’s Entertainment House who loved their story. Neel being a film consultant moves around the mainstream and parallel cinema with equal ease. She was so adamant on casting Roopa that they waited for almost two years to get the actress on board. And last year they were ready for the go.
The story is the son’s discovery of his mother, of who he has no memories and who he would never again meet. The son returns to Kolkata to find why her mother had chosen her roots over her relationships. He was at her place to do away with her belongings after her death, but realises words, moments, people and places have a lot more meaning in life than they appear, even after one’s death.
“Many people who watched the movie told us they felt like going to their homes after watching it. We have dealt with Kolkata as a character, though very objectively,’’ Neel chips in. The locations are real and majority of shots are handheld. The past and present has been interwoven for a treatment that is non linear.
Though IFFK would set the stage for an Asian premiere of the film, many bigwigs in Bengali cinema who have already seen the movie have loved it which gives the duo much confidence. We ask Aditi what her father Ajoy Roy a documentary filmmaker thought about her movie.
“He is proud of the film and me, though he would not say it to me and goes around telling the whole world,’’ tears well up in her eyes as she hurriedly wipes it off. Suddenly, we knew why this girl could make ‘Abhosheshey’.  
Catch her movie at Kairali on Tuesday.