BAFTA Breakthrough India honors directors Ajitpal Singh and Prateek Vats look forward to global collaboration

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has selected 10 promising talent across cinema, television and gaming for its Breakthrough India initiative for 2022. In the second year of the initiative, the esteemed people were selected by a jury that included composer AR. Rahman, writer Apoorva Asrani, actors Anupam Kher and Ratna Pathak Shah, director Shonali Bose and producers Guneet Monga and Siddharth Roy Kapur. The purpose of the selection is to help the new group explore international opportunities for networking and professional development with the support of BAFTA and Netflix.

Excerpts from an interview with two dignitaries:

Ajitpal Singh

writer-director

fire in the mountainsAjitpal Singh’s first feature film, is the story of a mother trying to save money to build a road so that she can take her wheelchair-bound son for physiotherapy. his short film rammat-gammat Explored how money and privilege separate two football players. 2021 web series tab bar (Family in Punjabi), written by Harman Wadala and Sandeep Jain and directed by Ajitpal Singh, is a crime thriller that follows a family that is in the deep end with a cast led by Pawan Malhotra and Supriya Pathak. is thrown and desperately tries to stay away.

Ajitpal’s stories break away from the mainstream: “I grew up in villages until I was 16, did my graduation in Ahmedabad and have been home in Mumbai for the past eight years. I have family and friends in Ahmedabad and rural Punjab and this gives me an idea of ​​what is happening in India. I look for stories that reflect different people, not just the privileged class.”

His father used to run a cinema hall in Bathinda, but from here his interest in cinema did not develop. Ajitpal remembers that he was more impressed by the coffee machine, which dispensed coffee with froth like coffee, rather than films. His interest in cinema grew years later and he turned to independent cinema.

tab barfor which he caught the attention of the BAFTA Breakthrough India jury, took shape after being hit with a high note fire in the mountains Being selected for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. He and . author of tab bar Decided to keep the story realistic. “The production design, costumes and dialogues were non-filmy. I believe all this helps the actors to deliver real life performances. We wanted to reflect the setting of a lower middle class family in Punjab.”

week ago tab bar Walked on the floor, Ajitpal was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He admits it was a difficult time, but adds that the work gave him reason enough to move on: “If it weren’t for the work, I might have been angry at home.”

Ajitpal is now in Kashmir, doing research for his next film in the horror genre. He sees the BAFTA recognition as more recognition after last year’s Sundance selection: “It’s an exciting time for storytellers. Stories are crossing borders. I have watched content from South Korea, Spain and Nordic countries on Netflix. Such a possibility frees us, storytellers, from the constraints of finding a large (theatrical) audience in one country, one region and one language. I am looking forward to new collaborations.”

Prateek Watso

writer-director

in 2020, Ib alay oo! Premiered on YouTube for 24 hours as part of the We Are One Global Film Festival. It has got more than 1.5 lakh views. Much later, it started streaming on Netflix. “This mainstream digital distribution ensures that the viewership for our film is never stagnant,” says Prateek, who is often greeted with emails from across the world. Through the story of a migrant laborer hired to drive away monkeys in Lutyens’ Delhi, the film explores politics, religion and nationalism under the guise of humour.

Prateek Vats | photo credit: bafta

The film’s writer Shubham, cinematographer Saumyanand Sahi and Prateek are among the 10 selected by BAFTA Breakthrough India. “It is a big recognition for the film,” says Prateek, referring to how some core team members are getting offers for projects.

Indie filmmaking was a natural progression for Prateek, an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune: “When you want to tell different stories, but no one wants to invest money in it, independent cinema is the way.”

Born in Ranchi and raised in Delhi, he saw international cinema at the Cinefan Film Festival in Osian, Center for the Study of Developing Societies and screenings at Max Muller Bhawan, all of which shaped his interest in cinema. “I was mainly drawn to theater during my days at Kirori Mal College, Delhi. My attitude towards cinema opened when I joined FTII; I loved how he taught cinema and exposed us to different types of cinema that I never knew about. ,

Prateek’s earlier film was a documentary a very old man with huge wingsWhich won the Special Jury Award at the 65th National Film Awards in 2018. then he followed Ib alay oo!Which made its mark at the Mumbai International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

Prateek has been vocal about his ideology, a case when he was among the student agitators who raised their voice against the narrow scope for different types of cinema at the International Film Festival of India, Goa in 2015.

When asked about the increasing scrutiny and censorship being faced by filmmakers, Prateek says, “We are living in a situation where festival organisers, streaming platforms and production houses do not want to offend anyone. Unless we hurt the status quo through our stories, nothing will change (in society). To make an indie film, you go through huge hurdles and hope to reach an audience through a film festival. If it is closed, it closes the door to the aspiration of independent voices. ,

Ib alay oo! The possibilities have opened up for Prateek and along with his co-writer Shubham, he is working on a writing project for another filmmaker (the details of which he does not disclose) and later in 2022, his second feature Looking forward to the film project. In the meantime, he hopes the BAFTA Breakthrough India selection will help him “meet practitioners from various fields of cinema, consultancy and international collaboration”.