Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost
Filmfest 2014
(Qissa: Der Geist ist ein einsamer Wanderer)
(QISSA)
Germany, France, India, Netherlands 2013
Original version with English subtitles
(Original: German, English, Punjabi)
German Premiere
Director: Anup Singh
Section: Spotlight
Set in post-colonial India, QISSA tells the story of Umber Singh, a Sikh, who is forced to flee his village due to ethnic cleansing at the time of partition in 1947. Umber decides to fight fate and builds a new home for his family... individual ambition and destinies collide in a struggle with eternity.
"I recall the tales of my grandfather. His fierce and inconsolable voice as it conjures the 1947 partition of India before my childish gaze. The image of Shiva, our lord of creation and destruction: his matted hair wild with mourning and grief as he carries the corpse of his wife through the crumbling universe... QISSA, for me, is a gathering of such memories, family stories, fragments of history and mythology, and images of a lost childhood."
Anup Singh
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal, Tisca Chopra, Faezeh Jalali, Sonia Bindra
Credits
Screenplay: Anup Singh, Madhuja Mukherjee
Director of Photography: Sebastian Edschmid
Film Editor: Bernd Euscher
Composer: Béatrice Thiriet
Production Designer: Tim Pannen
Costume Design: Divya Gambhir, Nidhi Gambhir
Sound: Peter Flamman, Simone Galavazi
Producer: Johannes Rexin
Co-Producer: Bettina Brokemper, Nina Lath Gupta, Bero Beyer, Thierry Lenouvel
Production Company: Heimatfilm GmbH + Co. KG
World Sales: The Match Factory GmbH
Distributor: Camino Filmverleih
Director: Anup Singh
