News

Exclusive: Film follows a young Tibetan woman living in exile in Delhi.

Shrihari Sathe’s Infinitum Productions has boarded Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam’s second narrative feature The Sweet Requiem.

Scripted by Sonam, the film follows a young Tibetan woman living in exile in Delhi, whose life is unexpectedly shattered when she runs into a man from her past. Sarin and Sonam will co-direct, while Sathe will produce alongside Sarin.

Sarin and Sonam’s first narrative feature, Dreaming Lhasa (2005), was executive produced by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Gere and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Their credits also include award-winning documentaries such as The Sun Behind The Clouds (2010) and When Hari Got Married (2012).

The Sweet Requiem was selected for the Drishyam-Sundance Institute Screenwriters’ Lab in 2015, as well as Busan’s Asian Project market and Film Bazaar in Goa. Cast and locations have been finalised and the film will shoot on location in India later this year...

Still from When Hari Got Married

D haramshala-based filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam who ruffled a few feathers with their documentary on Tibetan struggle for independence The Sun Behind the Clouds in 2010 are now ready with When Hari Got Married, the story of a taxi-driver’s arranged marriage in the Himalayas. The film has screened at prestigious film festivals like Idfa Amsterdam, Dok Leipzig, Films From the South, Oslo and is all set to release in theatres in India on August 30.

Ritu Sarin in conversation with Nandita Dutta:

How did you meet Hari and why did you decide to follow his wedding?

We live very close to Hari’s village a few miles outside Dharamshala. We’ve known him and his family for many years. In fact, his elder brother works part-time for us and so does his father. When Hari was engaged to get married, he invited us to his wedding.

When Hari Got Married

When Hari Got Married, a documentary by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam will release on August 30 at PVR cinemas in Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore under PVR Director’s Rare.

A co-production of White Crane Films and Itvs International (USA) with funding from Idfa Fund (The Netherlands) and South Film Fund (Norway); When Hari Got Married takes a humorous look at Hari, a taxi driver from Dharamshala, as he prepares for his marriage to a girl he has only seen once, and that too, with her face covered. Hari’s unusual courtship on the mobile phone and his eventual marriage provide a warm and illuminating insight into the changes taking place in India as modernisation and globalisation collide with age-old traditions and customs.

The documentary premiered at the Films From the South Festival in Oslo, Norway in September 2012. It has travelled to several festivals including Dok Leipzig,...

The maiden edition of the Dharamshala International Film Festival will be held from 1st – 4th November.The film festival is an initiative of the Dharanshala based filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam.

Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam run an independent film company and produce films mainly focusing on the subject of Tibet. Some of their films include, The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom, The Thread of Karma, Dreaming Lhasa and Big Treasure Chest for Future Kids.

12 films to be screened at the festival are announced so far, more will be coming soon. Those lined-up are:

Miss Lovely

India. Directed by Ashim Ahluwalia. Two brothers, Vicky and Sonu Duggal, produce forbidden sex-horror films for India’s small-town picture houses in mid-1980s Bombay. Vicky is struggling to run the tabooed operation, while Sonu desires to produce a romantic film which he would call ‘Miss Lovely’.

The film...

• It’s been almost fifty years since the People’s Liberation Army of China began their occupation of Tibet. It’s only in the past ten years, however, that a handful of films have surfaced concerning the resistance. Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun are the most well known examples, but the problem with those films in lies in their occidental interpretation of an oriental culture. Dreaming Lhasa is the first film to come from a Tibetan. Thus, the Tibet the audience sees in this film is not full of grand, widescreen mountain vistas, intricate palaces or colorfully adorned monks. Most of this film takes place in pool-hall bars, muddy streets, and cramped apartments with unreliable electricity. The inhabitants of these locales feel alienated from both eastern and western influences alike. How can one reconcile the west’s media control and the forced governmental control by an eastern superpower?

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