HT Correspondent
JORHAT, June 11: Junmoni Devi Khaund, producer of the Hindi film Kooki, on Tuesday announced that the movie would be released in India and Nepal on June 28.
Kooki is a Hindi film from the state, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, 2024 on May 21. The film narrates the story of a 16-year-old gang-rape survivor and the trauma she endures. The film has been directed by Pranab J Deka.
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Addressing a meet at the Jorhat Press Club here on Tuesday, Khaund said that it was very encouraging that distributors from Nepal had approached her for distribution rights and that discussions were on with distributors from UK, USA, Morocco, France and Monaco for a release two weeks after the June 28 release in India and Nepal.
“After the Cannes screening there was a lot of positive feedback about the movie, from producers, distributors, actors and others who had watched it in the market segment of the Cannes Film Festival, with many of them saying that the trauma of a gang raped 16 year old girl and how she picks up the threads of her life, is a universal theme which can be widely related to.”
“I am a lawyer and have come across several such cases. The police catch the criminals, file charge sheets, lawyers fight the cases, if we win we are happy, but nobody really cares what happens to the girl after that. How does she survive? Through the film we have tried to depict not just the struggles and sufferings of a rape survivor, but also attempted to provide a positive solution,” Khaund said.
She further said that the stories of the victims had moved her to create a rough outline for the making of a movie, and story board was formed with the director Pranab J Deka and others, some of who came from Mumbai.
Khaund further said that they had made the movie in Hindi so that it catered to a wider audience and was not limited to the regional level.
“It is time that movies made in the state compete with those made in Bollywood and South India. Kooki is one such movie in which the director, producer and all the other actors including the lead are all from Assam, barring four actors from Bollywood in minor roles,” she asserted.
Director Pranab J Deka, who has directed episodes of the popular TV series, Crime Patrol said that the movie is an endeavour to create a movement in society akin to the one, which happened in education post Three Idiots and Taare Zameen Par.
Deka said that the actors in the film include Rajesh Tailang, Dipannita Sarma, Ritu Shivpuri, Devoleena Bhattacharya, Bodhisatwa Sarma, Kamal Lochan, Bibhuti Bhushan Hazarika, Preeti Kangkana, and Ranjib Lal Borah and that Bollywood singers Sunidhi Chauhan, Divya Kumar, Mohammad Faiz and Krittika Sharma from Assam have lent their voices to three songs in the film.
Rishita Khaund, who was also present at the meeting was the lead actor, who played the role of the rape victim. She said that the story is a sweet love story of a 16-year-old girl. But this goes terribly wrong when she is gang raped.
“I got under the skin of the actor to such an extent that I became Kooki and would shiver in fear at night and call my mother to sleep with me. I was lucky to watch the premiere at Cannes and was surprised to see most of the audience lingering post the screening, with tears in their eyes and compliments that this was a movie which delved into a universal issue,” she said.
