“Yatra Timro ra Mero”,a Nepali short film by Maark Pictures Production from Gangtok announced its arrival with an original sound track (OST) release of a song by Agyaat, a band from Kalimpong. The song shares its title with the film and is the inspiration behind the short film.
While speaking to ETChronicle, the woman in charge, who is the director and editor of Yatra, Mandira Chettri, informs that the movie is an experimental product that seeks to raise the quality of film making in Sikkim. She urges more artists of this genre to invest more of their time and resources into film production. “We worked with budding actors who have worked so hard and invested in multiple acting workshops as our central characters and with a team that used better quality equipments which are seldom used in Sikkimese produced films to ensure that this went as a learning experience for us as well as produced a good quality film as an end product” said Mandira.
The film features Sherab Chopel Bhutia, Anisha Rasaily, and Nikhil Chettri as the main characters and Rupa Tamang, Sajal Pariyar, Chitish Chettri and Samridh Rai with others in supporting roles.
This short film revolves around two brothers who are the only family each other have. The elder brother falls ill and is taken care by his younger brother. The lead female is the long lost crush of the sick brother who reunites with him in the hospital, and the story develops around this serendipitous event of innocent emotions between the three of them.
“Yatra itself was a journey of learning for artists behind the camera and in the front of it, setting the project itself as a production of a good quality end product and a chance at learning more about feature film production was the main objective behind this film production, so to build avenues for more good quality films, technically speaking”, adds Mandira.
Set out as an effort to encourage more actors in Sikkim to come forward into the industry that they hope to build in Sikkim for filmmaking, the hopes of the team are as bright as the hues in this film is, as cleared to us by the director/editor.
With a few post-production sound and colours works in process, the short film is tentatively set to release in the springs this April-May. A premiere followed by uncertainty is in course for the film.
“That is what we face you know, we have the product but we don’t know where to put it, what we should do once we make a film. So we wanted this to be a learning and growing kind of project for the future of Sikkimese film production”, she shares.
With many people now working in the entertainment business in Sikkim and with the state’s love for art and culture, it seems that Sikkim is just a stone’s throw away from producing world-class quality productions.
