Hindi
Anup Singh’s ‘Qissa’ gets multi-platform release
NEW DELHI: Qissa by Anup Singh, which has already won accolades on the international festival circuit, has finally hit the theatres.
Interestingly in a unique venture, the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) decided to release the film across multiple platforms simultaneously. It has been released theatrically, on DVDs, and on some websites as well.
NFDC general manager and head of marketing Vikramjit Roy told Indiantelevision.com that the international acclaim that the film had won all over the world and in India made it necessary for it to be made available on all formats. Roy said that it was not a typical film and therefore the NFDC had decided not to treat its release in a typical manner.
Meanwhile, Anup Singh told Indiantelevision.com that the 2013 film has so far been to around 100 film festivals and won 15 awards, including one in India.
He said the Punjabi film was based on an original story and could be seen in various ways. It had been inspired by the stories he had heard of his grandfather’s struggle during the partition of the country. But the idea of bringing up a girl child as a boy could be seen as symbolic of many things: the desire for the head of the family to have a male child after three daughters, the way many female children were dressed as boys during Partition to save them from exploitation, and the way history and tradition continues to affect even modern contemporary Indian society.
Among other places, the film was one of the nine Asian films in competition at the 20th Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie in Vesoul in France.
Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost was also the opening film of the 43rd International Film Festival at Rotterdam from 22 January to 2 February last year and this marked the European premiere of the film. It won the Audience Award at that Festival.
The award comprising Euro 10,000 (Rs 9 lakh approx) is given to the most voted film supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.
Qissa which received the Hubert Bals Fund for Script & Project Development in 2004, was made with further support from the Netherlands Film Fund, and was co-produced by Dutch company Augustus Film.
Set in post-colonial India, the film stars Irrfan Khan as a Sikh who has fled his village to escape ethnic cleansing at the time of partition who tries to start a new life for his family. The film stars Irrfan Khan with Tisca Chopra, Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal, Sonia Bindra and Faezeh Jalali among others.
Qissa is represented internationally by Germany’s The Match Factory GmbH. The film had its North American and Asian premieres at the Toronto International Film Festivaland Busan International Film Festival respectively.
Earlier, the film added one more feather in its cap when actor Tillotama Shome won the Best Actress award in the New Horizons competition at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
In Qissa, Shome plays the youngest daughter of Umber Singh (Irrfan Khan) who decides to raise her as a boy.
Shome made her screen debut with Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding in 2001 and went on to play roles in Florian Gallenberger’s Shadows of Time and Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai.
Qissa also won the Silver Gateway Award in India Gold competition at the 15th Mumbai Film Festival and the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award for Best Asian Film at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival where it had its premiere.
Hindi
Dhurandhar the revenge storms past Rs 1,000 crore in a week, rewrites box office records
Aditya Dhar’s spy thriller sets fastest run to Rs 1,000 crore with record-breaking weekday hold
MUMBAI: The box office has a new juggernaut—and it is moving at breakneck speed. Dhurandhar the revenge has smashed past the Rs 1,000 crore mark worldwide in just a week, clocking a staggering Rs 1,088 crore and resetting the rules of the blockbuster game.
Backed by Jio Studios and B62 Studios, and directed by Aditya Dhar, the spy action sequel opened to the biggest weekend ever for an Indian film globally—and then refused to slow down. Unlike typical tentpole releases that taper off after Sunday, this one powered through the weekdays with rare muscle, posting Rs 64 crore on Monday, Rs 58 crore on Tuesday, Rs 49 crore on Wednesday and Rs 53 crore on Thursday.
The numbers stack up to a formidable first-week haul. India collections stand at Rs 690 crore nett and Rs 814 crore gross, while overseas markets have chipped in Rs 274 crore, taking the worldwide total to Rs 1,088 crore in just eight days.
The film’s opening weekend alone delivered Rs 466 crore, laying the foundation for what is now being billed as the fastest climb to the Rs 1,000 crore club in Indian cinema. Every single day of its first week has set fresh benchmarks, from the highest opening weekend to the strongest weekday hold—metrics that typically separate hits from phenomena.
A sequel to the earlier hit Dhurandhar, the film has not just built on its predecessor’s momentum but obliterated previous records, emerging as the biggest global blockbuster run by an Indian film to date.
At this pace, the film is not merely riding a wave—it is creating one.
