‘Kaun Kitney Paani Mein’ closes Jagran Film Festival’s sixth edition

The sixth edition of the Jagran Film Festival came to an end on Sunday with the screening of National Award-winning filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda’s satirical drama film “Kaun Kitney Paani Mein”.

The screening of the film – based on water crisis, caste and the power equation when water, the most important resource, vanishes and how the oppressed become the oppressors – was attended by Madhab Panda along with its lead stars Kunal Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla and Gulshan Grover at the Siri Fort Auditorium here.

Set against the backdrop of Odisha, “Kaun Kitney Paani Mein” travels between two villages fighting over a water reservoir since a couple of decades as it aims at making viewers aware of the impending water crisis and sanitation in rural areas where 70 percent of India’s population resides.

“The film is very close to Madhab’s heart. It’s a story he has been waiting to tell since a long time. It concerns on the idea about how shortage of water is affecting our lives and we are not aware about it. Water is quite equal to gold. The film has both sides – it will make everyone laugh but will also make them cry,” Kunal told IANS at the screening.

Also available on the last day were actress Divya Dutta and director Sriram Raghavan for the screening of action crime drama film “Badlapur”, and actor-filmmaker Piyush Mishra for his film “The Playback Singer”.

The five-day film fiesta started with the screening of award-winning and internationally-lauded “Masaan” on July 1 and continued to present independent cinema to the critics and movie aficionados, showcasing more than 100 feature and short films this year and 20 in the World Panorama section.

On the last day, homage was paid to late filmmaker K Balachander through his iconic 1981 love story “Ek Duje Ke Liye”.

The 2015 edition of Jagran Film Festival will now traverse through Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut, Dehradun, Hisar, Ludhiana, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Raipur, Indore and Bhopal before culminating in Mumbai.

“Film festivals have been done since ages in the big cities. But Jagran has taken it to the grass root level, which is the unique thing that they have done. These types of events provide platforms to filmmakers from where they can showcase their talent to the audience. They have small cities lined up, which many big festivals never thought of to travel,” Saurabh said at the event.

Organised in close collaboration with festival partners such as Whistling Woods International (WWI), Film Federation of India (FFI) and Motion Picture Distributors Association (India) Pvt. Ltd. (MPDA), the 2015 edition is all set to surpass its own benchmarks of presenting over 16 cinema appreciation workshops, 400 screenings in 17 cities in 2014.

About the response received, festival’s strategic consultant Manoj Srivastava told IANS that they “witnessed 85 percent occupancy in total”.

“Over 18,000 moviegoers came at the screenings. Now we are closing the Delhi chapter and it’s just beginning of the journey. We are all on for 16 cities starting from Lucknow and Kanpur from June 10 to June 12. After that we will travel to Allahabad and Benaras from July 24 to July 26. Like this we have whole series. We hope the response will be the same there too.”