Fourth Direction adds French co-prod
By Patrick Frater
Tue, 10 July 2012, 12:20 PM (HKT)
Veteran French producer Catherine Dussart has come on board The Fourth Direction Chauthi koot, a film project by India's Gurvinder SINGH (pictured).
"Catherine brings her immense experience on board and that will really help us showcase the film in the European market," producer Kartikeya Narayan SINGH told Film Business Asia.
Fourth Direction has been shopped around several international project markets. It won an award from the Hubert Bals Fund for script development, appeared in the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) 香港亞洲電影投資會 and this month is pitched again at Paris Project, part of the Paris Cinéma Festival.
Singh is a documentary film maker who achieved acclaim and festival honours with his first feature Alms of the Blind Horse Anhey ghorhey da daan (2011).
Fourth Direction combines and adapts two short stories set in a turbulent 1984 when Sikh activists are pressing for their own state separate from India. The story involves a man caught between state security and terrorist forces and a village where the locals are forced into barbaric acts to prove that they are not harbouring terrorists.
It is planned to be made on a budget of $1 million. "Financing is a long process but we are hoping to have majority of the funds in place by the end of this financial year," said Kartikeya Narayan Singh. "We plan to start shooting early next year."