Assamese director Bhaskar Hazarika’s film Aamis (Ravening) will be premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Aamis is among the 103 films that will be screened at the 18th edition of the festival, which will be held between April 24 and May 5 in New York City.
Hazarika has previously directed the acclaimed horror anthology Kothanodi (2015). Aamis will be screened in the International Narrative Competition section. “Nirmali, a married Paediatrician in her late 30s, leads a peaceful but joyless domestic existence in Guwahati, Assam,” says an official synopsis on the Wishberry crowdfunding website. “One day, she meets Suman, a young PhD student researching food habits in northeastern India, who warms up to her in a manner she seems unaccustomed to. Suman’s work exposes him to the belief that there’s no kind of food that can be considered abnormal, and Nirmali is drawn to this idea. The two quickly discover that they have a shared love for food – specifically, meat. Together, they bond over meals comprising unusual meats on platonic dates, although Suman longs for some sort of physical contact. As Nirmali’s tastebuds grow more adventurous, their relationship takes a dark and bizarre turn.”
The cast includes sattriya dancer Lima Das and Arghadeep Baruah. The film has been produced by Poonam Deol from Signum Productions, Shyam Bora from Metanormal Motion Pictures and Wishberry Films.
The Tribeca Film Festival was founded by Robert DeNiro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. Among its premieres for 2019 are Jared Leto’s documentary A Day in the Life of America, Christoph Waltz’s crime drama Georgetown, and the Margot Robbie-starrer Dreamland, a Depression-era drama.
The Freida Pinto-starrer Only, a dystopian thriller, will also be screened at Tribeca. “Half of the films selected in the three competition sections are directed by women and 40% of the feature films have one or more women directors, while 29% of the feature films are directed by people of color and 13% of the feature films are by individuals who identify as LGBTQIA,” Variety said. The 103 titles were selected from among 9,295 submissions, Variety added.
The opening film will be Roger Ross Williams’s documentary The Apollo, about New York City’s Apollo theatre. Among the titles in the Narrative Competition section are Indian-American director Sonejuhi Sinha’s Stray Dolls. “Two young women working in a motel are caught in a web of crime when one petty theft spirals into the next, setting off a domino of violent events,” reads the official synopsis.
Among the films in the Spotlight Narrative section is Mary Harron’s Charlie Says, about the serial killer and cult leader Charles Manson. Antoine Fuqua’s documentary on Mohammed Ali, titled What’s My Name | Muhammad Ali, is in the Spotlight Documentaries section.
Veteran director Werner Herzog returns with Nomad: In The Footsteps Of Bruce Chatwin, about the travel writer and novelist. There is a new documentary on the Woodstock music festival, titled Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation and directed by Barak Goodman.
The Chinese documentary One Child Nation, which was picked up by Amazon after a screening at the Sundance Film Festival in January, will also be shown at Tribeca. Directors Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang explore the effects of China’s forcibly enforced one-child-per-family policy, which lasted between 1979 and 2015.