With SUNRISE, Partho Sen-Gupta reveals himself to be, not unlike Anurag Kashyap (UGLY, GANGS OF WASSEYPUR), one of India’s most promising independent filmmakers. Staying off Bollywood’s beaten path, he instead offers with SUNRISE a poignant and maddening noir-inflected thriller, set in Mumbai’s child-trafficking industry. Deliberately provocative, structurally challenging and exquisitely stylized, in alternating Refn-esque garish colours and expressive chiaroscuro that would make Pedro Costa proud, SUNRISE unfolds like a lucid dream, or rather, the nightmare of one police officer, whose guilt materializes as horror. Powerful, bold and uncompromising, there is nothing even remotely sunny about SUNRISE, yet it shines bright, violently eclipsing the competition. (by Ariel Esteban Cayer)
SYNOPSIS:
The life of Inspector Lakshman Joshi (Adil Hussain, seen in LIFE OF PI) has been a living hell ever since his young daughter Aruna vanished without a trace. Driven nearly insane by her disappearance, he walks his police beat by day and furiously roams the streets at night, pursuing an elusive shadow-man into the darkest, seediest, most haunted corners of Mumbai. Night and night again, this fever-dream pursuit leads him to Paradise, a gentlemen’s club where disgusting men prey on underage dancers. Powerless, he heads home every night, to find a broken wife. Another case soon lands on his desk: that of Naina, a kidnapped six-year-old, brought into a nearby brothel. Are Paradise and Naina connected? Joshi spirals further and further downward…
SUNRISE
1st screening:
Digital Projection, 85mins
Location: Chicago Filmmakers
5243 N Clark St. 60640
Date: Saturday, January 16th
Time: 8:00pm
Ticket price: $9.00
2nd screening:
Digital Projection, 85mins
Location: Columbia College (Hokin Hall)
600 S Michigan Ave. 60605
Date: Tuesday, January 19th
Time: 6:30pm
Ticket price: $9.00
