Around a hundred more days left for the 2023 edition of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival to begin (19th January to 29th January 2023). There’s time for that. Meanwhile, the Sundance Institute has recently announced 35 projects as grantees for this year’s Sundance Institute Documentary Fund grant totalling around a whopping $1.39 million.
Out of these 35 projects from multiple countries, 5 are under development, 15 in production stages, 10 in post-production stages, and 5 are actively pursuing audience engagement and social impact campaigns, as per Sundance.
And out of these 35 projects and Sundance grant recipients, an untitled Indian / French / Norwegian documentary film directed by Nishtha Jain and Akash Basumatari has also been listed (in the post-production segment). But a quick google search indicates that the name of this untitled mystery Indian film is ‘Farming the Revolution’. As per the available info, the film apparently focuses on the much-publicized protests against farm laws and the farmers which participated in these protests. On the Sundance website, just the tagline has been mentioned – “For without farming, there could not be a single nation.” That’s why we termed it a mystery title as the particulars couldn’t be confirmed.
As per information available online, Nishtha Jain is the same filmmaker who had helmed the widely admired National Award-winning documentary film ‘Gulabi Gang’ which was based on the titular vigilante group. Besides directing ‘Gulabi Gang’, the filmmaker is also known for other documentaries such as ‘Lakshmi and Me’ and ‘City of Photos’.
Other documentary projects which have previously received Sundance’s Documentary Film Fund grants include the Academy Award winner ‘American Factory’, Brazilian documentary ‘The Edge of Democracy’, Oscar-nominated American documentary ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening’, and another Oscar-nominated title ‘Minding the Gap’, etc.