His debut film Tingya is the toast of the festival circuit and headed for Cannes this summer. For Mangesh Hadawale—a farmer’s son and a one-man theatre troupe—this is just the beginning.

I meet mangesh hadawale at his one-room flat in the fishermen colony of Mahim in Mumbai. This urban ghetto is similar to the rural world he hails from, in its laziness, open spaces, colourful but crumbling hutments and a huge banyan tree under which men, dogs, kids and travellers enjoy an afternoon siesta. A strange address for someone who is the latest toast of the Indian film festival circuit. Hadawale’s directorial debut, Tingya, a Marathi film on a boy’s relationship with his ailing bull told in the backdrop of farmer suicides in Maharashtra, is heading for the Cannes showcase this summer after having pipped Taare Zameen Par and Chak De! India to the Best Film award at the 10th Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) film festival held in Mumbai recently.

“Mujhe apni fakiri ka na koi dar hai na afsos hai,” begins the 28-year-old as he gamely climbs up the banyan trunk for a photo shoot. “I live the life of a free bird. Yesterday, I was roaming in the forests of my village Rajuri (90 km from Pune), listening to the songs of Aandhi under a starry sky. It was bliss. Today, I am in Mumbai to address a press conference before Tingya’s theatrical release this Friday. Next month, I will be in Naples at a festival showcasing the film. I prefer unpredictability,” he says.

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