Aditya Kripalani’s concept of ‘Not Today’ and being on the jury at Asian Film Festival of Barcelona

Mumbai, Dec 14  Author and Indie filmmaker Aditya Kripalani is the first Indian filmmaker to be invited as the jury at the Asian Film Festival of Barcelona 2021.

His film ‘Not Today’ based on suicide prevention starring Harsh Chhaya and Rucha Inamdar has officially released in Spain on OTT platform Filmin. It is also officially selected for the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) category in the festival.

Recently Aditya has released the poster of their film ‘Not Today’. He says: “In one image we wanted to put across the emotion of suicide prevention. And we found it. Thanks to poster maker Gargi Upadhyay. The feeling of falling down a rabbit hole but being caught before you reach the end of the tunnel, we felt, was captured in this hand drawn poster. It felt good that so many people shared it, including Manoj Bajpayee sir, Gajraj Rao sir, Aahana Kumra, Priya Bapat and so many more.”

He has previously directed some films such as ‘Tikli And Laxmi Bomb’, ‘Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal’ and ‘Devi Aur Hero’. He further shares about the concept of the movie, saying: “‘Not Today’ talks about suicide prevention centres and the personal lives of counsellors who work there. How their cases affect them. How it’s very hard to not make it personal. And how sometimes you don’t know who is saving who. Life is beautifully strange like that. In the past few years suicide prevention is a much more urgent thing to talk about specially in our country but also around the world.”

Aditya spoke about his experience of being invited to the jury for the film festival. “It was lovely first to see people from so many different countries reacting to the film exactly as we had intended. And then to be amongst so many other fiction and documentary filmmakers who were also doing jury duty in different categories. To see how they deliberate and how hard they fight to be just was refreshing. All the judges cared a lot about justice. At least those I spent time with. It was quite a mix of people.”

Also, Aditya Kripalani is now working on an international film starring Indian actress Priya Bapat and Geetika Vidya Ohlyan. The film is called ‘Father Like’ and it also stars international actor Lee Huat.

The film is about an Indian woman looking for her father in Singapore. She has enlisted the help of a Chinese taxi driver (played by Lee Huat) to find her real father. The film is slated to be shot extensively in Singapore and will be in English.