Countdown to Cannes 21 Days: UTV's Udaan

The first film from India to be an official selection of the festival in 16 years, Udaan, the first feature directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, is a coming of age film depicting a teenage boy's return home after being abandoned in a boarding school for eight years. Motwane, interviewed by LiveMint.com for the Wall Street Journal is quoted saying:

Honestly, I feel very pressurized right now. I’m honoured by it but my priority right now is to finish the film. It’s in the post-production stages and I have a long way to go to make it a perfect product. It’s a big step for me and Anurag (Kashyap). Actually for all Indians since it pushes the doors of world cinema open a little more for us.

Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, UTV Motion Pictures has been coming out of the traditional mode of Bollywood and breaking into the true international movie scene over the past few years. Motion Pictures is one of UTV's many divisions, and is among the largest studios of the Indian Film Industry and the first in India to adopt a 'studio model' with film production activities vertically integrated with distribution and international sales.

At MIP, UTV Motion Pictures announced multiple movie output deals for some of its recent titles such as historical epic Jodhaa Akbar, Fashion and Race with leading Middle Eastern TV networks MBC, Infinity TV, Kuwait TV and Abu Dhabi TV.

Jodhaa Akbar is the first Hindi film to be dubbed in Arabic to air on free-to-air, pan-Arabic network MBC, which estimates its audience at 130 million viewers. The network will also telecast other titles such as Chance Pe Dance, What’s Your Raashee, Wake Up Sid and “ain Aurr Mrs Khanna” over the next few months.

In keeping with a trend recently spotted by Screen International, TV films and miniseries seem to be becoming the new arthouse film.  Udeen will surely go the TV route, it comes from UTV after all.  In doing this it is part of the worldwide trend so noted in Screen's editorial "Small is Beautiful" citing Todd Hayes's five hour mini series Mildred Pierce backed by HBO, Canal Plus' 320 minute Carlos the Jackal which will also premier as a feature in the Cannes Film Festival to be released by IFC both as a miniseries and as a 2 hour feature after its limited release of the 6 hour Red Riding trilogy.  "The lines are blurring between TV and Film".  And into the mix is coming Transmedia also being noted more and more by the press.  More on that anon...