Two films, two struggles

After a fine response at international festivals, two films about the struggles of Indian women overseas are ready for a summer release here.

It's only a short time before these two films hit the silver screens in India. However, both of them have already reached global audiences through screenings at prestigious festivals as well as at special previews.

Both have been adapted from books, both tell a story from an Indian woman's point of view, looking at their struggles and adjustments. Both have attracted controversy "" in fact, one of them delayed its release because of the Censor Board playing snip-snip. And now, both are awaiting their Indian summer release.

The films in question are Jagmohan Mundhra's Provoked and Mira Nair's The Namesake. While Provoked, according to those who saw the film's preview last year at the IIFA in Dubai, features Aishwarya Rai in an impressively deglamourised role, The Namesake is Nair's attempt to bring Jhumpa Lahiri's book to the big screen.

And though it may be too early to predict the box office status of these films in India, producers have already begun their marketing exercises to promote the respective films. There's UTV, which is already geared up to release The Namesake.

The company seems to have sensed the market of global films and is the first Indian company to have tied up with three international companies including Fox, Sony and Disney. The tie-up kicks off finally with The Namesake, for which both Fox and UTV have jointly invested $8 million and released 1,150 prints, including 500 in the US (the highest number), 125 in India, 45 in Britain, 40 in France, 50 in Italy, 75 in Spain and 100 in Japan.

"Actually, The Namesake is India's first truly crossover movie for worldwide release," says Ronnie Screwala of UTV. Fox and UTV have spent approximately $10 million on marketing and prints too.

As far as Provoked is concerned, the authorities are still tightlipped about the number of prints that will be released for the film. However, Eros International has decided to release the film sometime in the last week of March 2007 or early April 2007.

In order to make sure the film reaches the masses, Mundhra has decided to dub it in various Indian languages including Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu and Tamil.

The film, based on the real-life story of Kiranjeet Ahluwalia who was tortured by her husband for 10 long years, and who set his feet on fire in an act of retaliation one night, has been given the U/A certificate by the Indian censors. Since the film has a lot of profanity (mostly by Kiranjeet's husband), Indian audiences might find some dialogues deleted when they see the film. For every dubbed version Mundhra will have to apply for separate censorship.

It's interesting to note how both these films also travel together to various film festivals and other important screenings. At Tongues on Fire, an annual Asian film festival in London that aims at celebrating the contribution of South Asian women filmmakers from all over the world, both these films will be shown besides others like Deepa Mehta's Oscar-nominated Water. The two films also made it to festival like Cannes and Toronto recently.

While Provoked was shot from a start-to-finish schedule (it took 32 days) and has music by A R Rahman, The Namesake had a difficult schedule according to a blog promoted by Kal Penn, one of its leads. The blog gives interesting insights into the film including some promotional tours made by the cast and crew of the film.

As Penn mentions on one of his posts, "I'm in Los Angeles for what is called a 'press junket' "" essentially a day-long series of interviews with journalists, reporters, television, magazine, newspaper and media outlets who ask questions about the film just before release."

There are other nuggets of information too: author Jhumpa Lahiri getting actively involved in the making of the film, that Penn would personally like the film to be viewed as an American film instead of being termed as an "Indian film", that for the character of Gogol (that he essays) Penn was always consulting people to get Indian nuances right.

It's now our turn to wait for the two films to see an Indian summer release. Hopefully the box office reports of both Provoked and The Namesake will generate a lot of sunshine.

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THE NAMESAKE
Director: Mira Nair
Starring: Tabu, Irfan Khan, Kal Penn
The film, based on a book by writer Jhumpa Lahiri, is about an Indian family that moves to New York in the '70s. Exploring issues of identity and culture-clash, it covers three decades in the Ganguly family. The son Gogol (Kal Penn) copes with his own struggles to come to terms with his Bengali heritage and identity. Tentative release date: March, 23, 2007

PROVOKED
Director: Jagmohan Mundhra
Starring: Aishwarya Rai, Naveen Andrews, Nanditta Das
The film is based on the true-life story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, an Indian woman who set fire to her brutal husband, and the road she travels from dazed vulnerability to empowerment in prison before she is freed by a group of Asian women appalled by this miscarriage of justice. Based on the book Circle of Light: The Autobiography of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, written by Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Rahila Gupta. Tentative release date: April 3, 2007