Runtime – 62 min

Director – Abhijit Mazumdar

The film follows fragmented journeys of a group of young people in the city of Mumbai. All of them are working on a film in different positions. They keep negotiating with their insecurities in the film crew and also difficulties in their personal lives.The film that they are working on, is a story of a young cab driver’s victimization and violent revenge. Increasingly the fiction starts finding uncanny resonances in the fragmented journeys of the youngsters.

The Many Shades of Violence

Abhijit Mazumdar’s Yeti is the only Indian film to be showcased at the 32nd Torino Film Festival

Picture this. Five struggling filmmakers working on a film that deals with the victimisation of a Mumbai-based taxi driver. While they are dealing with the reel life violence of their protagonist, the real life picture of these five individuals also portrays different faces of violence. That’s the plot behind Yeti, a film by Abhijit Mazumdar. It was the only Indian film to be screened in the non-competitive section “Waves” of the recent 32nd Torino Film Festival, Italy.

Yeti, says Mazumdar, is a diploma project of five acting batch students of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) — Manoj Sharma, Prateek Rathore, Atmaja Pandey, Yashashwi Mishra and Anurag Mishra — who also form the cast of the film. “Every year, FTII invites directors from outside, mostly alumni, to work with the graduating batch of acting students for their diploma projects. When I was approached, I was more than happy to take up the project,” he says, adding that long interactive workshops and sessions with the students translated into a film. The 62-minute film was shot in Pune in November 2013 over 10 days.

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Mazumdar graduated in film direction from the FTII in 2005. Sharing his journey from Kolkata to Pune, he reveals that his father was a movie buff who loved Hindi films and every weekend the family would watch a film. “Later, as I grew up, I started watching more of Hollywood films. I also had a group of friends; we would watch films together and have elaborate discussions on the films. I started attending film festivals and even assisted people who were making films. But then it struck me that I needed to learn more deeply and hence applied at FTII,” he says.

“The campus has cinema running through every little part of the institute. One meets different people who come with their own understanding of cinema,” he adds.

After the course, Mazumdar, who teaches at the Whistling Woods Academy in Mumbai, shifted to the city and went on to direct a few short films, documentaries and commercials. His feature script titled Delirium was selected for Mumbai Mantra Sundance Screenwriting Lab, 2013.

In 2012, his short film Vanishing Point was screened at festivals such as Glasgow Short Film Festival, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, Durban International Film Festival and International Film Festival of India (IFFI). Chlorophyll, his 2005 short film, was a part of the competition section of The Way We Live Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Fresh Film Fest and official selection of Probelauf XI.

Written by Garima Rakesh Mishra | New Delhi | Published:December 8, 2014 12:35 am