Making An Impact

Director of critically acclaimed and award-winning films like I Am Kalam and Kadvi Hawa, director Nila Madhab Panda’s next, Halkaa, featuring Ranvir Shorey, Paoli Dam and Tathastu, has already won the Grand Prix for best film at the Kinolub Festival for Children and Youth, Poland, besides bagging the Grand Prix De Montreal at the 21st Montreal International Children’s Film Festival where it had its world premiere. It is all set to release in India in August this year. The new-age director and producer has several socially relevant films to his credit, and this one is no different. Society caught up with him for a tête-à-tête…

- Suchitra Iyer

My conversation with acclaimed filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda begins on an interesting note, with both of us expressing our ire about the pathetic mobile phone network in the country. He asks me to call him on his land line to have an uninterrupted chat, while I tell him I am hanging out of my balcony trying to get a decent reception. He jokes that this practice would soon lead to several unintentional suicides. Considering that Nila Madhab Panda, the I am Kalam maker, is known to make films on socially relevant causes, may be this could be a good idea for his next, I joke in return. “We will have to do something about it,” he assures me.

Talking about our mindless dependence on modes of communication takes Nila Madhab back in times. The filmmaker, who has been awarded the coveted Padmashree, belongs to an obscure village in Orissa and has grown up amid the naturally stone-crafted river, Mahanadi, in a large family with minimal resources.