MUMBAI: Augustus Film of Netherlands and Endorphine Productions, Germany will come together to share the production costs of Partho Sen-Gupta’s Sunrise (Arunoday) with Independent Movies, Mumbai and NFDC.

The film tells the story of Joshi, an embittered Mumbai cop who has been searching for his missing daughter for ten years since she disappeared one day after school.

Joshi’s quest is used to reveal the horror of child trafficking and exploitation in India, a taboo subject which nonetheless affects a huge number of the children in the world’s most populous democracy, a country where lives are often cheap.

"It’s good for me now as a large burden has been removed from my shoulders and I have to only stick to the creative process of filmmaking. NFDC’s backing the film also gave the impetus that we were waiting for. But I think that the 156 crowd-funders are the real heroes of the film project,"said Sengupta.

Sengupta had, in the recent past, collected $21, 000 by crowd funding from the website indiegogo.com for Sunrise.

The film, featuring Adil Hussain (of Life of Pi fame) and Tannishtha Chatterjee (of Brick Lane fame), is expected to go on the floors early next year.

The co-production deals were finalised at Marche du Films at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival. The film will now be an Indo-German-Dutch co-production with a mixed international crew.

Earlier, Sengupta had written and directed films like Shakti Timeless, Sound Check, Hava Aney Dey and Saturday Night in Bombay.