Toronto: Two films Slumdog Millionaire starring Anil Kapoor and Firaaq directed by Nandita Das have created quite a buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival 2008.

To make a city the villain, the hero and the star of a film when the city is a place called Bombay, you need somebody called Danny Boyle, it seems.

Slumdog Millionaire takes Bombay-become-Mumbai by the scruff of the neck and shakes the evil, the hypocrisy, the ugliness and the beauty out of our city and into a magically crafted two-hour length of celluloid. It had a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2008.

The film is based on Q and A, a novel by serving Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. Jamal, a bright-eyed slumdog in a typical Mumbai slum, is carried by many cruel currents into a TV game show. Through it he hopes to earn money and locate Latika, the love of his life. He succeeds in a tale halfway between fable and documentary. Boyle, of Trainspotting fame, ends his film in an improbable, unashamed but oddly satisfying bit of Bollywood on VT platforms.

Another world premiere at TIFF-08 features Nandita Das doing two courageous things. In Firaaq, she leaves a career where she has more than arrived as a consummate actor and takes on the agonies and infrequent ecstasies of direction. Secondly, she tackles the controversial and recently perilous theme of communal violence, though Firaaq is about much more than Ahmedabad in 2003. It is focuses on human nature amid and reacting to terror, it castigates inhumanity whichever gods are worshipped, it addresses prejudice on the streets as much as in intra-family relations.

The story is fictional though based, in the film-makers words, on "a thousand true stories." A housewife is haunted by the memory of closing her doors on a woman pleading to be rescued from a murderous mob; a young couple decides to leave town because of communal prejudice, then decides to brave out the consequences of name and religion: two morals, among others, in a story that never moralises, guilt and decency heightened to make a point.

Nandita Das film is a tribute to a fine actor now behind the camera and sitting at the editing table. The directorial touch is surprisingly assured in a first feature, the management of situation and character intelligent and sensitive. Shuchi Kothari shares the screenplay credit with the director. Percept Films wins credit in both senses of the word for backing, instantly and totally, a film that is not run-of-the-mill and for recognising courage and talent in a director making her bow.
Source : DNA