Finding an apartment in the bustling city of Mumbai can be difficult. But do you know what's more difficult? Being a single woman and trying to get an apartment.
Counterfeit Kunkoo is the first Indian short film in 15 years to premiere at the Sundance film festival in Utah, USA. Magic produced with a wave of Reema Sengupta's wand, the short picked up the torch of glory from the last one which got selected in 2002 called Birju.
Making short films is nothing new for Reema. She made her first film in 2011 and has been experimenting with her ideas since then. She is also the co-founder of Catnip productions where, apart from producing music-related content, she also focusses on promoting individual content.
Earlier this year, Reema revisited a script that she wrote many years ago. ''It was a different script," she said. "when I looked at it, I thought: What is wrong with me? What was I thinking? I was just so melodramatic!" That was where she dared to do something tough: "I looked at it as a harsh critic." After a bit of tinkering, changing tonalities and "raising the dramatic stakes", Reema presented her masterpiece short: Counterfeit Kunkoo.
"It's a sign of marriage that doesn't have any meaning anymore," she said, explaining her film title. Her film looks into the struggle of Smita, a middle-class Indian woman without a husband and in search of an apartment. Without revealing much, Reema says that the film will also address issues such as discrimination, marital rape and reclaiming one's sexuality.
2017 is a year when this filmmaker managed to sow and reap. "If you've gotten through Sundance, there's a lot of credibility to your name and your film," she said. Sundance is a pioneering film festival that gives importance to independent filmmaking. "They look for how much the filmmaker has maximised the resources that they had."
What does one do after making a short film? That's the question that Indian short filmmakers are trying to find answers for. While feature films have a marketing and distributing team, shorts have always struggled to come out and make a mark.
But Reema says that the scene for shorts are more promising now than it was five years ago. "It would help showcase what my skills are as a filmmaker and it will get me exposure to the festival circles." But now, filmmakers can also make monetary profits as bigger companies play a role in funding films by acquiring them.
Listen to excerpts of the conversation with Reema Sengupta here: