22 year old film maker from Kolkata, Abhiroop Basu, currently studying film making at Prague Film School, has a stellar beginning to his film career earning two consecutive selections at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival under the Cannes Court Metrage-Short Film Corner with the 11 minute film "An Afternoon with Julia" in 2016 and the 20 minuter "The Paper Man" in 2017. His debut entry "An Afternoon with Julia" was one of the six Bengali short films selected out of a total of 40 from India to compete in the "Cannes Short Film Corner" that was held between May 11 and May 22, 2016. This year his short film "The Paper Man" will be screened at an auditorium dedicated to the short films in the festival that is to take place between May 17 and 28, 2017.
An ex-Xaverian, Abhiroop's foray into film making began as early as when he was just 17 with a film called The Wall Paper. A few years down he made two short films, A Gift and The Day After Tomorrow. The Day After Tomorrow, which represented India in various International Film Festivals under the Short Film category, and went to 11 festivals across Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Pondicherry and Boston, revolved around violence against women. Deeply inspired by the accolades that followed his The Day After Tomorrow, Basu, realized that film making is his calling, "It was thunderous.
And that left a deep impact on me. I knew then what I wanted to do. Potters make pots out of clay, the poet finds magic in the mundane. I simply wish to make cinema." says this passionate disciple of French cinema.
The then novice at film making claims that he had initially learnt the craft by watching films of Godard, Truffant, Woody Allen and other great makers.
"My films are a humble tribute to that riveting unpredictability and that sense of complete liberation that cinema as an art form brings, especially the French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague)", says the Satyajit Ray fan.
Abhiroop's craft has already found many fans among his peers in the industry and he was selected to be a Panelist at the India Pavilion, Festival de Cannes 2016 organized by Indian Ministry, along with Aditya Vikram Sengupta and Anurag Kashyap.
An Afternoon with Julia, 2016 an independent film and Basu's tribute to Paris, is about a casual conversation between two couple that takes a captivating turn in the finale, has earned several prominent awards in India. Basu's this year's entry to Cannes 'The Paper Man' is short film that explores a daughter's psyche after the death of her estranged father. His last short film, before he left for Prague to pursue film making course features Bengali actors.
Basu's maiden trip to the French Riviera in 2016 opened his eyes to the struggle that Independent film makers face across the globe. Hoping to make a full length film for his Indian idol, revered Anurag Kashyap, Basu rues, "Though the recognition of short films is picking up in the country as many Indian short film makers and their films are being featured in prestigious festivals like Berlin and Cannes, the genre does not find much popularity yet in India apart from a niche set of audience in the metros.
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