Suman Ghosh on ‘The Scavenger of Dreams’: Fascinating how garbage connects rich and poor

New Delhi, Oct 6: An article about how the rich and the poor are connected through garbage inspired filmmaker Suman Ghosh to make his latest film “The Scavenger of Dreams”, which had its premiere at the prestigious Busan International Film Festival.
Starring Shardul Bhardwaj of the “Eeb Allay Ooo!” fame and National award winning actor Sudipta Chakraborty, the film was screened under A Window on Asian Cinema section on Thursday. Ghosh, a National award-winning filmmaker known for “Dwando”, “Nobel Chor” and “Kadambari”, said he wanted to highlight the plight of those left behind in the “so called modern and globalised world” through a garbage collector and his family from Bihar who make a living by collecting trash from posh localities of Kolkata.
“The idea was sparked by an article in the New York Times and it had an interesting line: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. It was about a garbage collector in California where billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and other IT tycoons live…
“I found it fascinating that the only connection between the richest economic strata and the lowest economic strata is the garbage… And I thought it is true for every place in the world,” Ghosh told PTI in a virtual interview from Miami.
“The Scavenger of Dreams” is the director’s second Hindi film after the yet-to-be released “Aadhaar”, starring “Mukkabaaz” fame Vineet Kumar Singh. Ghosh said “The Scavenger of Dreams” is an experimental film that he and the cast were keen to do as it is about people living on the margins.
“It is a comment on our society. Currently as we are, we live in a very modernised society, a so called globalised world. But there is a huge section of this society, which we actually turn our eyes away from. (PTI)