Young director Indranil Roychowdhury’s ‘Mayar Jonjal’, an Indo-Bangladesh joint venture film, has been selected at the prestigious Shanghai International Film Festival. The film which will have its world premiere at the festival has been included in the Asian New Talents Awards (ANTA) Competition, the director told PTI on Wednesday.

ANTA is the competition that awards the first and second feature films of a director. Roychowdhury’s first film ‘Phoring’ which first brought popular Bengali actor Sohini Sarkar to the attention of critics had won the Vincent Ward prize in ANTA in 2014.

Shot across different locations of Kolkata and Dhaka in 2019, ‘Mayar Jonjal’ is the story of a petty criminal who loves a sex worker and wants to run away with her savings. He meets a laid-off factory worker who is desperate to stop his wife from working as a housemaid as two stories run parallel. The film has a cast comprising acclaimed actor Ritwick Chakraborty, Kamalika Banerjee veteran Paran Banerjee among others.

While it has the reference point of a short story by late Bengali writer Manik Bandyopadhyay, the director then takes it in an altogether different course. Shanghai is among the first 12 A list festivals ranked by FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Association.) The 23rd edition of Shanghai International Film Festival is all set to open on July 25, nearly a month after it was originally scheduled. The festival was postponed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As per the organisers, this edition of Shanghai International Film Festival will be held both offline and online in a bid to minimise the impact of the pandemic. Theatre screenings, outdoor screenings as well as online screening will be held during the festival.

The director said his film will also be screened in a major European festival and will have its European premiere there in the first week of October..