‘Battle for Banaras’ to premiere at Dubai film festival

Director Kamal Swaroop’s controversial documentary “Battle for Banaras“, which was denied a certificate by the censor board, is all set to premiere at the 15th Dubai International Film Festival.

Produced by Manu Kumaran, the documentary will be sceened in the ‘Cinema of the World’ section that has Hollywood movies like “Big Short” (Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling), “Concussion” (Will Smith) and “Spotlight” (Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo) among others.

“We wanted the film to premiere at MAMI but the censor board in its wisdom did not deem the film fit to be screened in India,” says Manu Kumaran, the producer of the documentary.

“We are very excited that audiences will finally be able to see Kamal Swaroop’s labour of love and we look forward to their reaction,” says Kumaran.

For us, the journey of the film has just begun and we plan to showcase the film at film festivals around the world,” says Swaroop, who will be attending the film screening at Dubai.

Shot on 4K over a period of 44 days during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the documentary, inspired by Nobel laureate Elias Canetti’s book, ‘Crowds and Power’, captures the excitement, the madness and the noise behind the high-octane poll battle in the holy city of Banaras, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency.

The festival, which began today, will run till December 16.

Inputs by PTI