Abhijaan to screen at Indian Film Festival of Melbourne

Soumitra Chatterjee, one of the tallest actors in Bengali cinema both literally and figuratively, has left behind a void that cannot be filled. Film lovers can only look back and look up at the tall order of oeuvre he has packed off to posterity.

His final film, Parambrata Chatterjee’s directorial Abhijaan, a meta-narrative on Soumitra’s life will be showcased at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne. Film enthusiasts will get to see the stalwart play himself on screen for the only time at the film festival.

Parambrata took to Twitter on Friday to share the news.

Abhijaan marks one of Soumitra Chatterjee’s final projects before he passed on.

National award-winning music composer Prabuddha Banerjee has given the music for the movie. Padmanabha Dasgupta, Parambrata and Dr Shubhendu Sem have penned the screenplay and dialogues of the film.

Jisshu Sengupta plays Soumitra Chatterjee in his youth. Prosenjit Chatterjee will be seen in a cameo as Uttam Kumar, while Sohini Sengupta will play Chatterjee’s daughter Poulami Basu in the film. Actor Q will portray the role of Satyajit Ray. Paoli Dam will essay the role of an actor of the 60s and 70s and Sohini Sarkar will play the gifted actor Madhabi Mukhopadhyay.

Rudranil Ghosh will star as Soumitra’s good friend and talented actor Rabi Ghosh. Besides them, a string of acclaimed actors has joined the cast in prominent roles too, such as Sujan Mukhopadhyay, Tridha Choudhury, Tanusree Chakraborty, Payel Sarkar, Tuhina Das, Samdarshi Dutta, Padmanabha Dasgupta, Joyraj Bhattacharya, Dulal Lahiri, Shubhashish Mukhopadhyay, Biswanath Basu, Surajit Bandopadhyay and Anindita Basu.

The trailer of the film dropped on March 25. Soumitra Chatterjee comes alive as the actor and artiste of world renown, the politically conscious intellectual, the theatre artiste, and more, all in a vivid montage. While interweaving the personal with the professional, the cerebral with the aesthete and more, at the heart of it all is an impressionistic portrait of the multi-talented man and the doyen in Indian cinema that he is, caught in snapshots through the vicissitudes of his life on celluloid and off it.

 The shooting for the film started before the pandemic but had to be stalled in spurts along the way, due to the lockdown. Soumitra, who was playing himself in the movie, was back on the sets after and contracted the virus that took him away.

The release date of Abhijaan is yet to be known.