EKTA co-presents

Uttara ("The Wrestlers")

A fairy tale that unfolds like a fever dream, yet which remains concise in its attack on communal violence and ethnic intolerance,

THE WRESTLERS is already being hailed as

"the best Indian film in years" (Venice Film Festival 2000) and

"of immediate relevance" by India International Centre Quarterly.

at the

In an isolated Bengali village most amusement comes from watching the two railway flagsmen, Nemai and Balaram, wrestle one another continuously, or from getting free meals from the local Christian priest and his adopted son. However, when Balaram brings home Uttara, his beautiful new bride, and when three Hindu fundamentalists arrive to preach and possibly practice destruction, the town’s–and the two wrestlers’–balance becomes threatened, and possibly lost forever. For Dasgupta the film focuses on "an eternal tension that exists between beauty and ugliness and on a dream that will not die." Reminiscent at times of the work of Werner Herzog, THE WRESTLERS’ visions–a parade of dwarves; a woman leaning towards a mailbox, listening to the sounds of letters; masked performers dancing through a forest, their puppet heads weaving slowly through the trees; and an unsettling industrial noise seeping into every breeze–are remarkable, with their conflagration of innocence, nature and violence not soon to be forgotten. - Jason Sanders