The film fraternity in Assam was jubilant over the success of Rima Das’s film Village Rockstars.
The national award winning film was selected as India’s official nomination for the Oscars, proving that independent filmmakers can do wonders with minimum budget.
National award winning film critic and filmmaker Utpal Borpujari said that Rima’s success will inspire many independent filmmakers to come up with their stories.
“It’s indeed a great thing to happen for Assam and Northeast to get the official selection which never happened here. To compete with some of the best films in the country and emerge number one itself says about the film. But from now onwards, the real competition starts when the film will have to compete with the best of the world to get the official nomination,” Borpujari who won the national award for his debut feature film ‘Ishu’ this year told The News Mill.
Village Rockstars, which is set to release nation-wide on September 28, was made by Rima almost single-handedly with a bunch of village kids who were never trained on acting and films. Rima herself says that even she never went to a film school to get formal training on filmmaking.
Excited about the September 28 release, Das said in a statement, “After travelling to many film festivals across the world and winning hearts, I am so delighted that the exciting journey of Village Rockstars has come to its final stage when we prepare with nervous anticipation and hope to present the film to the audiences in our homeland.”
The film, which was made with a minimal budget, has already travelled at least 40 countries and won laurels after being premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017. It also won the Golden Lotus which is the best film award at the National Film Awards this year. Besides, the film won three other awards – editing, best child artiste and audiography.
“It’s a path-breaking development in many ways. Now the film will set a mark of films from our region. Now people will not ask where is Assam or from which part of the country you belong to. Village Rockstars is an answer to all these questions which we have been facing over the years in different film festivals or in other places as well,” Bobby Sarma Baruah who made ‘Sonar Baran Pakhi’ (The Golden Wing), a biopic on legendary folk singer Pratima Barua Pandey, told The News Mill.
She is also hopeful that of late many youngsters have been making some brilliant films will be motivated to carry on their good work.
“It’s an experimental guerrilla filmmaking process for Rima. Another positive is that an independent project like this has brought hope for us,” Bobby who is working on a Sherdukpen language film ‘Mishing’.
