After the premier in “Un Certain Regard” – the Cannes program that pays special attention to intriguing, provocative, and unconventional film stories – director Konstantin Bojanov’s new film “The Shameless” was met with enthusiastic applause from both audiences and film professionals. The film is a co-production between Switzerland, Bulgaria (Klas Film), France, Taiwan, and India, and the lead actress, Anasuya Sengupta, received the Best Actress award in the competitive section. She also became the first Indian actor in Cannes history to be honored with such an award, and she immediately became a star in her homeland.
The very story of this film’s creation is extremely interesting – Bojanov’s work on the idea began more than a decade ago, sparked by William Dalrymple’s book Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India and his desire to make a documentary film intertwining four different stories from the book, one of which features a prostitute from Karnataka in northern India. During his research, the director also conceived the idea of a love story, which gradually became the foundation of “The Shameless.” The documentary concept eventually transformed into a project for an animated film for adults, and when Bojanov discovered Sengupta online as an artist and set designer who could visualize his ideas, he realized that she could become one of the main characters in his dramatic narrative. Sengupta takes on the role of Renuka, who is forced to flee from a brothel in Delhi after killing a policeman. She seeks refuge in a community of devadasis in a small town in northern India, where she meets the young Devika. The two women fall in love, even though fate has destined them to a life from which they cannot escape. Despite all that reality throws at them, they try to find their own path to freedom...
Finalizing the budget to begin shooting “The Shameless,” which has evolved into a feature film project, is not the only obstacle to its realization – after the global Covid crisis, India is no longer such a suitable destination, and moreover, it is unlikely that the necessary permits will be obtained given the plot and its specific love story. Kathmandu, Nepal, offers an alternative. For the entire creative team, it is extremely important to know whether the film will have a chance to appear in Indian cinemas and how it will be received by the public. “The greatest challenge for me is the fact that I am a foreign director telling an unusual story from the reality of India in the Indian language. I am prepared to be attacked from all sides. But it is very important to know whether I have succeeded in moving the audience,” shares Konstantin Bojanov. “The responses from the festival audience in India have been extremely enthusiastic, and the screenings sell out instantly. But at the same time, it is ruled out that the film will pass through the Indian censorship board, which unfortunately makes wide distribution impossible... Despite the great compromises I had to accept, ‘The Shameless’ is approaching the kind of film I wanted to make... My films are not realistic; rather, I try to create worlds into which you step and remain from the first to the last frame.”
A visual artist, director, and screenwriter, Konstantin Bojanov graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Sofia and then earned a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London. He later moved to Los Angeles and New York. His directorial debut was with the documentary film Lemon Is Lemon (2001). His first feature-length narrative film was Ave (2011), starring Ovanes Torosian and Anjela Nedyalkova, which premiered at Cannes’ Critics’ Week. In 2017, Light Thereafter, starring Barry Keoghan, premiered in the competitive program of Rotterdam. Bojanov’s films have been showcased at over 100 festivals worldwide and have won dozens of nominations and awards.
In the cast of "The Shameless", besides Anasuya Sengupta, are Omara (playing Anuksha Suguna Pushparaj) as the innocent, young Devika, along with Auroshikha Dey, Rohit Kokate, Mita Vashisht, and others. The composer is Petar Dundakov. The film has been produced with the support of the Bulgarian National Film Center.
The premiere of "The Shameless" in Bulgaria is part of the 29th Sofia Film Festival program!
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