What is the identity of a person living in a sprawling metropolitan city? A piece of identification card such as a driving license or a PAN card? A phonebook full of names and numbers of friends and colleagues? How does one connect to ones environment with greater sensitivity at a time when there is an ever-widening divide between people? These were the thoughts chasing filmmaker Kamal KMs mind when he heard a friend narrate one of her experiences. A labourer working at her house collapsed in the middle of his work. This man had no form of identification on him and she didnt know who to ask to aid in getting medical help for him. It evoked many questions in me, says Kamal,a former journalist and alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII),Pune. His film ID takes off from where his friends story ends. I started writing the film,taking the story ahead. But I deliberately left one part of the story unwritten. I believed that the process would reveal that to me, says the 38-year-old,who is based in Mumbai and was in the city to attend an Onam function. ID follows the efforts of Charu,the films protagonist,to trace the roots of a man without a name,and thus tackling the issue of migrant labourers in big cities and the problem of displacement in Mumbai. The process of making this film revealed unknown urban spaces to me. Behind our protagonist,Charu,our film crew traversed these spaces engaging in the search for the identity of a nameless man,the one we were trying to place in the vast anonymity of the city, says Kamal. The 87-minute film stars actors Geethanjali Thapa and Murari Kumar in lead roles. Shot on a shoestring budget,the film is produced by Collective Phase One,a producers group that includes big names from the film industry,such as Oscar-winning sound engineer Resul Pookutty,cinematographer Rajeev Ravi,production designer Sunil Babu,editor B Ajithkumar and cinematographer Madhu Neelakandan. Almost all the cast and crew is from FTII. Shot in over 15 months,the film premiered at the Busan International Film Festival late last year and has been travelling across the globe,winning more than half-a-dozen awards that include the Lotus Best Film Award at Deauville Asian Film Festival. The filmmakers are now planning to release the film online and on television. We are looking at all the avenues possible. Apart from screening at colleges and social organisations,we are in the middle of talks with Doordarshan for a television release, says Kamal. The director,who shuttles between Mumbai and his hometown in Kerala,seems to have come a full circle,as his next project When Mirza Comes Back has been chosen among 30 other projects selected for the Asian Project Market (APM),held alongside the Busan International Film Festival. The film,which is set in Kashmir,is reportedly going to be a co-production between India and Lithuania,and is the only Indian project selected for the APM that provides a platform for promising directors and producers of Asia to meet with co-producers or financiers. The APM will be held in October,says Kamal.
