India Film Festival of Alberta 2023

Films

Edmonton Movie Club is a local non-profit society and a supporter of Independent/Regional cinema from India.

Competition Films

Land of Gold | 2022 |105 minutes | USA | English/Punjabi/Hindi

Kiran Singh (Nardeep Khurmi), a 1st generation Punjabi-American, has just accepted a last-minute trucking job to Boston which causes a blow-up argument with Preeti (Pallavi Sastry), his 37-week pregnant wife, who admits to feeling abandoned. En route to complete this “one final job,” Kiran discovers Elena (Caroline Valencia), a 10-year-old Mexican-American stowed away in his trailer. After debating the merits of turning her to the police, Kiran deduces she might be undocumented, and instead resolves to shepherd Elena to her uncle in Boston despite putting his own livelihood in jeopardy. As the pair ride across the changing American landscape, Kiran faces what it means to be a father and Elena learns how to trust again. They connect through family, dreams of the future, and a healthy debate over God’s existence, all while the ghosts of the past, racially charged encounters, and the threat of I.C.E. linger over their journey. Land of Gold is the 2021 AT&T Untold Stories winner. AT&T’s Untold Stories program is a multi-year, multi-tier alliance between AT&T and Tribeca, along with the year-round nonprofit Tribeca Film Institute to develop underrepresented content creators. The program awards one million dollars, mentorship, and distribution to underrepresented filmmakers to produce their film and premiere it at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Shivamma 2022 | 104 minutes | India | Kannada

Synopsis: Shivamma (46), a mother of two and the wife of an ailing bedridden husband, works as a government school mid-day meal cook in a small village. She is the only active working member of her family. Her entire family is in the process of finding a suitable groom for her daughter, though she has her own affair running alongside. Shivamma is introduced to a nutritional product and, looking at it miraculously bettering her husband’s condition, she tries to explore it further and learns about its network marketing scheme and its financial benefits. Getting highly inspired at a motivational event, she decides to take the risk of setting up her own nutritional club, putting everything at stake. But one unfortunate event derails all her attempts and also threatens her daughter’s wedding. Despite all the opposition and the blame from her own family, Shivamma’s determination stays unaltered.

The Winter Within 2022 |99 minutes | India/France/Qatar | Kashmiri and Urdu

In the city of Srinagar, Nargis searches for her missing husband, Manzoor, until she is forced to hopelessly return to her village home. With a little help from a local man Yaseen, she silently toils away on an exquisite weave. But the quiet of the Kashmiri winter is like the silence of the graveyard, waiting to be shredded by what lies buried within.

Tora’s Husband, 2022 | India | 135min | Language: Assamese

Tora lives in a town in Assam. She is a mother to two rambunctious children and is married to a good man named Jaan (played by the director’s brother Abhijit DAS). Tora’s husband runs a bakery and restaurant and does civil engineering projects so a lot of people beyond family rely on him but there are stresses that dog at his heels. The onset Covid-19 exacerbates everything. Debts add up, orders dry up, customers act up while staff get sick, quit, and people die. As Jaam begins to struggle, the sickness of the age seems to seep into him and he turns to alcohol while turning away from Tora who tries to understand him while keeping their Covid-hit household afloat. Shot over the course of 15 months during the pandemic, DAS uses an observational style to depict a family drama during the age of Covid-19.

Follower, 2021 | India | 140 Min | Language:Marathi,Kannada

Follower tells the story of a brainwashed youth belonging to a marginalized community and by digging deeper in his story, attempts to explore a world infected with hate propagated by misinformation about each other. The film navigates through personal differences of characters and creates a microcosm of a larger society that is consumed in the ‘US vs THEM’ mindset.

Don , 1978 | India| 166 Min | Language:Hindi

A powerful gangster named Don (Amitabh Bachchan) flees the cops and is killed during a showdown with Officer D’Silva (Iftekhar). Hoping to crack down on the remainder of Don’s gang, D’Silva convinces a man named Vijay (also Bachchan), who is the spitting image of Don, to assume Don’s identity and go undercover to bust Don’s gang. But then D’Silva gets killed, and everyone from the gangsters to the cops think Vijay is Don. If he can’t convince them otherwise, it may prove fatal.

Deewaar , 1975 | India | 174 Min | Language:Hindi

Two brothers (Shashi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan) head for a showdown when one becomes a policeman, and the other, a criminal.

Vendhu Thanindhu Kaadu, 2022 | India | 172 Min | Language:Tamil

A young low-caste village boy travels to Mumbai to earn a living and to study. His quest takes him on a series of unexpected events, where he gets involved in the underground activities of Mumbai’s Tamil gangsters.

Rocketry, 2021 | India | 149 Min | Language:Hindi

Based on the life of Indian Space Research Organization scientist Nambi Narayanan, who was framed for being a spy and arrested in 1994. Though free, he continues to fight for justice against the officials who falsely implicated him

Mavka: the forest song, 2023 | 99 Min | Ukraine| Language:Ukrainian

Mavka must choose between love and duty to protect the Heart of the Forest.

Sholay, 1975 | India | 198 Min | Language:Hindi

After his family is murdered by a notorious and ruthless bandit, a former police officer enlists the services of two outlaws to capture the bandit.

Vinnaithandi Varuvaya, 2010 | India | 157 Min | Language:Tamil

An aspiring filmmaker goes through the ups and downs of romance when he falls for a Christian woman who says she only wants to be friends