Placebo
Director: Abhay Kumar
India, Finland | English, Hindi
2015 | 96min | Colour
Subtitles: English
Saturday, Nov 7 TIPA, 8:30 PM
After witnessing a mindless moment of self-inflicted violence on the campus of one of the toughest educational institutions in the world, a filmmaker embeds himself in the dorms of the institute to take a closer look at patterns of student violence. Four students agree to be followed for a year as part of this observational experiment. However, as the filmmaker starts infiltrating this complex mindscape of restless youth and soaring ambition, a starting new reality begins to emerge. Memory, time and space become increasingly distorted around the camera as the characters, with their dreams and aspirations falling apart, are pulled into a vortex of events through which no one will escape unhurt. Placebo is a journey in time through the corridors of excellence, where the ‘great Indian dream’ is imploding.
Abhay Kumar
Abhay Kumar was born in 1985 in Chandigarh, the capital city of Punjab. In 2008 he graduated from Xavier’s Institute of Communications with a diploma in film direction. From 2009-2011, his short films won each year at the Mumbai Film Festival(MAMI). In 2011, his hybrid animation short just that sort of a day became the first Indian film to compete in the animation category at Tribeca Film Festival and went on to win top awards at Busan, New York, Regensburg, besides winning a National Award in India. His first feature documentary Placebo– another hybrid project-had its world premiere at IDFA 2014 and won the jury nomination for best debut and recently competed at Hotdocs 2015. Besides making films, Abhay has been teaching independent film making across universities and recently gave a TedX talk titled ‘Andrei Tarkovsky and the art of 3D printing’.
Credits
Director: Abhay Kumar
Producers: Abhay Kumar, Archana Phadke
Cinematographer: Abhay Kumar
Editor: Abhay Kumar
Sound: Micke Nystrom
Music: Shane Mendonsa
Production Company: Storyteller Ink.
Festival Appearances & Awards
EBS International Documentary Film Festival, Seoul 2015 – Special Jury Award
International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam 2014 – Jury Nomination Award for Best Debut
Hotdocs Film Festival, Toronto 2015
Docpoint- Helinski Documentary Film Festival 2015
Cleveland International Film Festival 2015
Brooklyn Film Festival 2015
New York Indian Film Festival 2015
Turkish Radio & Television Awards 2015
Carnegie Melon University International Film Festival 2015
