A shorter version of Urmila Matondakar’s forthcoming film Pinjar is likely to be screened at the inauguration of this year’s International Film Festival of India.
In a move that is likely to displease a number of filmmakers at home, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has asked Indian directors to snip the length of their films to lend an international feel to IFFI 34. According to the international norms, the movies are usually of duration between 90 minutes to 150 minutes (2 and a half hrs).
Chandraprakash Dwivedi, the director of Pinjar is unhappy with this condition. His movie has the running duration of 3hrs and 12 minutes, which means that a considerable portion of the film will have to be edited to have a screening at the festival.
It is learnt that Dwivedi has already chopped off a song and a couple of sequences to cut the movie short by 20 minutes. The director says it is almost impossible to snip the film any further as it would be injustice to Amrita Pritam’s novel on which Pinjar is based.
Set in Indo-Pak partition times, Pinjar has Urmila playing a rape victim. The movie (in its complete version) will hit the theatres in October.
A shorter version of Urmila Matondakar’s forthcoming film Pinjar is likely to be screened at the inauguration of this year’s International Film Festival of India.