Sir [Closing Night]

Synopsis :

Ratna works as a domestic live-in help with Ashwin, a man from a wealthy family. Although Ashwin seems to have it all, Ratna can sense that he has given up on his dreams and is somewhat lost. On the other hand, Ratna, who seems to have nothing, is full of hope and works determinedly towards her dream. As these two worlds collide and the two individuals connect, the barriers between them seem only more insurmountable.

Director

Educated at Stanford University (B.A.) in California, and Sarah Lawrence College (M.F.A.) in New York, Rohena has worked in film and television for almost 20 years. Starting her career at Paramount Pictures Literary Affairs office in New York in 1996, Rohena has since worked in a range of roles from Assistant Director to screenwriter to independent producer/director.

Rohena’s most recent project What’s love got to do with it? a micro-budget feature documentary premiered at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2013. She independently produced and directed a non-profit campaign called Stop the Hatred to fight communalism. This featured 16 national icons including Amitabh Bachchan, Zakir Husain, Aamir Khan, Ashutosh Gowariker, Sachin Tendulkar and various others. This was screened in 240 cinemas nationwide and across all national television channels that are members of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation.

She has been commissioned to write for mainstream Hindi cinema directors including Kunal Kohli and Rohan Sippy as well as Santosh Sivan and Ram Madhvani (who represent independent Indian cinema). She co-wrote Kuch Na Kaho (featuring Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, produced by Ramesh Sippy) and Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (featuring Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherjee, produced by Aditya Chopra). She has also written more than 40 episodes for the very successful television series Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin, adapted from the same source as Ugly Betty (Betty La Fea). In her tenure as Communications director for Breakthrough (an international non- profit headquartered in New York) she released one of their music albums through Sony Music and executive produced a music video featuring Rahul Bose and Anupam Kher.

The UN Foundation invited her to serve as an advisor for their wildlife conservation campaign in India.

Having grown up in India, but having lived in California, New York and Paris, she is both an insider and an outsider to Mumbai.

Sir, Rohena’s current feature film project was selected by Critics week at Cannes for the competition sectiom, and has already been picked up by MK2 films for international sales as well as by a well-known French distributor Diaphana. It also received the support of the World Cinema Fund (Cinémas du monde) of the CNC (National Centre for Cinema) in France for post-production.

Director’s Note: (About the origins of the story) I’ve grappled with this class difference that exists in India all my life. When I was a child I lived in India and we had live in help in the house, and that was how we grew up. As a child there was someone who was my nanny, and she took care of me and I was very close to her, but there was clear segregation. I always had trouble with this dynamic, even as a child, and I didn’t really know how to understand it. I then went to study in the US for my undergrad, and I was at Stanford talking about ideology and philosophy, and then I would come home, and everything was the same. It was very difficult coming in and out of India, and as much as you might want to change things you can’t change them over night. I kept asking myself – what can we do?

Festivals/Awards

Festival de Cannes 2018, Cannes, France; AFI Fest 2018, Los Angeles, USA