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Exclusive | Tillotama Shome Starrer ‘Shadowbox’ (‘Baksho Bondi’) to Debut at 75th Berlin International Film Festival
Co-directed by Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi, the film has been selected to compete in Perspectives, Berlin International Film Festival’s New Platform for Outstanding Debut Features.
Filmmaker Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi's debut feature film Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi) is set to make its world premiere at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
Co-directed by Das and Sahi, the film has been selected to compete in Perspectives, a newly launched category spotlighting outstanding debut fiction features from around the globe.
According to the makers, Shadowbox—set in a quiet suburb of Kolkata—tells a poignant story of love, resilience, and the unyielding strength of Maya, played by actor Tillotama Shome, a working woman navigating intense challenges.
When Maya discovers that her husband, a retired soldier suffering from PTSD, is the primary suspect in a murder investigation, she and her teenage son are forced to extremes to keep their family together.
Apart from Shome, the film features a stellar ensemble cast, including Chandan Bisht as Sundar, Sayan Karmakar as Debu, and Suman Saha as Ripon.
Das, who has also edited the feature, called Shadowbox a love story set against considerable odds of "humiliation, being ostracised for marrying outside the community, and the taboo of suffering mental distress."
“It is also, very simply, the everyday fight of a working woman with a bicycle, who single-handedly holds her family together. The film’s selection in the newly inaugurated Perspectives Competition at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival is an immense honour," Das said.
Co-director Sahi, who began his filmmaking journey at Berlinale’s Talent Campus 20 years ago and serves as screenwriter and cinematographer on Shadowbox, added, “Tanushree and I met in film school 15 years ago, and we fell in love working on films together. The making of Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi) has been a collaboration of many years. Drawing from lived experiences, we wanted to intimately describe a family grappling with the residues of violence. The film explores how a set of events cause relationships to stretch and contract to the point of breaking, but our focus is always on the small gestures, which is where we find hope."
The film is produced by Naren Chandavarkar (Moonweave Films), Shaunak Sen and Aman Mann (Kiterabbit Films), and Saumyananda Sahi, with executive producers including Jim Sarbh (Wonderful Entertainment), Vikramaditya Motwane (Andolan Films), and Nikkhil Advani (Sumitra Gupta Foundation for the Arts).
Along with an extensive team of co-producers—Tillotama Shome, Dheer Momaya (Jugaad Motion Pictures), Sidharth Meer (Bridge PostWorks), Dominique Welinski and Isabelle Glachant (Shasha & Co), Prashant Nair (Nomad Media & Entertainment), Anjali Patil (Anahat Films), Anu Rangachar (Gratitude Films), Ishaan Chandhok (Criss Cross Content), and Shruti Ganguly (honto88).
Following the announcement of the film’s selection in Berlin, the producers said in a joint statement how they were struck by the "depth and nuance" of the script.
"The film tells a global, universal story while being deeply rooted in a local setting. Our faith in the script and the directors led to the film’s unique production model, as 17 co-producers have come together to help bring their vision to life," the statement read.