Private Project

The Exile

The film tells the story of Gouranga, a young man from a village in Bengal who has lost his wife recently. This loss is not only looming large on the family, which has been through a series of tragedies over the years, but also personally on Gouranga’s mind as he is not able to come to terms with his wife’s death. Eventually Gouranga embarks on a journey, where he is able to confront not only his own demons, but also comes across certain myths based in these rural settings, which border on the supernatural. The film is set in the late 1960s and deals with themes like loss, superstitions, sexual deviance, the supernatural as well as the role of the female in a society which at that time, was at a crossroad of the waning, age-old traditional belief systems and the ushering of postmodern thoughts and politics.

  • SAMMAN ROY
    Director
  • SAMMAN ROY
    Writer
  • Arghya Roy
    Key Cast
    "Gouranga"
  • Arpita De
    Key Cast
    "Nirmala"
  • Adrita De
    Key Cast
    "Woman in The Forest"
  • Soumya Majumdar
    Key Cast
    "Nibaron"
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Nirbaashon
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 21 minutes 30 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - SAMMAN ROY

Samman Roy is an independent filmmaker based in Kolkata, India. He started his filmmaking career with TVF, after leaving a well-paying job at a multinational IT company. Later he started making his own short films under independent banners in 2017. His short films AASTHA(2018), BEFORE THE RAINS(2019), MAIL(2020) are available on platforms like Hoichoi and Addatimes. He has completed his Master of Arts in Film Studies from Jadavpur University and is currently a trainer of Media Sciences at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology. Samman has almost 30 directorial projects in his bio, including 7 short films, over a dozen music videos, corporate films and 3 features (2 of which are in post-production). Apart from filmmaking, he is an avid singer, a writer and also runs a Youtube channel on film analysis.

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Director Statement

My childhood had been characterised by Bengali horror stories by eminent literary figures of the 19th and 20th century, who have not only been able to encapsulate the essence of the Bengali family in them, but also weaved the landscapes beautifully to create mood in a unique way. The reason behind making this film was to precisely recreate the atmosphere in those stories set in rural Bengal of the 20th century. Alongside, I also wanted to explore the dark side of rural society at that time - how it dealt with desires of the mind and body, while still being under a pretty thick blanket of orthodoxy. And finally, I wanted to create a horror film that relied less on jump scares and more on the mood created by the visuals and the inner conflicts of the characters in it.