CPH PIX 2013
POLITIKEN’S AUDIENCE AWARD
35
DIBAKAR BANERJEE
SHANGHAI PIX ALREADY DEMONSTRATED WITH the mini-festival ‘Indian Indies’ in 2012 that Indian film is far more than Bollywood – and one of the forces in this development is Dibakar Banerjee, who with ‘Shanghai’ has created a gifted, intense political thriller, which can easily live up to its French and American role models. He has based his film on Costa Gavras’s masterful paranoia thriller ‘Z’ and the novel it is based on, but here the action is moved to a chaotic and colourful Indian metropolis, which politicians want to turn into a new Shanghai – whatever the cost. Corruption and abuse of political power are the means that are supposed to force ahead the modernisation and get the residents to sell their land. But when a civil rights activist is killed during a demonstration, several dangerous elements enter into the picture. The versatile (h)indie star Abhay Deol plays the prosecutor who is tasked with investigating the death, but it quickly becomes clear that not everyone wants the truth to be told. ‘Shanghai’ has, understandably, caused quite some debate in India due to the critical light it casts on the downside of India’s new economic boom.
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April 12 20:00 EMPIRE April 15 16:30 DAGMAR
SHANGHAI India 2012, 110 min. Hindi with English subtitles Director: Dibakar Banerjee Script: Urmi Juvekar, Dibakar Banerjee Camera: Nikos Andritsakis Editing: Namrata Rao Music: Vishal & Shekhar Sound: Pritam Das Production: Dibakar Banerjee Productions Pvt. Ltd., PVR Pictures, National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) Producer: Dibakar Banerjee, Ajay Bijli, Sanjeev Bijli, Priya Sreedharan Cast: Abhay Deol, Emraan Hashmi, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Kalki Koechlin Distr.: Dibakar Banerjee Productions Pvt., Ltd.