
Sagnik Mukherjee
2021Na manush premer kothamala
Ashish Avikunthak
Satarupa Das, Jayshree Mukherjee
In a parallel universe in our own space-time continuum, humanity has been overrun by artificial intelligence. The machines are better, faster and more efficient at everything, outstripping their makers. However, one aspect of humanity escapes them: love. Their guidebook attempts to capture the phenomenon in 64 terms, including jealousy, regret and ardour. Posing in homey and romantic settings, they run through the entire spectrum with digital precision, yet without a hint of passion. Director Ashish Avikunthak outlines a worrying, yet confusing impression of a posthuman future in which technology has overtaken and annexed humanity. He presents the new masters of the universe as 2.0 versions of the Hindu pantheon. Yet while Hanuman, Shiva and Kali sometimes reveal all too human traits, this is definitely not the case when it comes to love. Loves dies out with humanity.
Glossary of Non-Human Love
Virndavani Vairagya
Ashish Avikunthak
Sagnik Mukherjee, Debleena Sen
Recalling memories of a friend who committed suicide, three lovers slowly slide into an anguish labyrinth of desire, loss and longing. They entangle in a colliding maze of forsaken loves, failed expectations and imperfect anticipations. A disintegrating web arises in which love exists, but as dispassionate yearning. Here affection is an indifferent desire that burns the soul to death.
Dispassionate Love
জলে ডুবে না
Naeem Mohaiemen
Sagnik Mukherjee, Kheya Chattopadhyay
In an empty hospital in Kolkata, India, a man faces protocols of blood, a subtly discriminatory office, and a vacant operating theater. His mind is on a loop of the last months of his wife’s life, when a quiet argument developed. When is the end of pharma-medical care, whose life is it anyway?
Those Who Do Not Drown
Bengali Variation
Siegfried, Siegfried
Sohini Sarkar, Sagnik Mukherjee
She, Sohini, poet and young journalist, decides to look for her childhood love, Sagnik. He, everlasting student, gets mixed up with gambling debts. A lovers' hide and seek game in the crowded maze of Calcutta.
Bengali Variation