Lost in Ladakh - Mid Day

By: Udita Jhunjhunwala

I love travelling. I love road movies,” says Ashvin Kumar, writer and director of a short feature film called Road to Ladakh.

Road movies are about people away from their natural environment,” he continues, talking about this 50-minute film which has its premier screening at the British Council tonight.

It took the young London-based filmmaker, who happens to be fashion designer Ritu Kumar’s son, 16 days, 45 crewmembers, 15 vehicles, two trucks with three generators and two lead actors who could endure hardship to put this film together.

Irfan Khan (The Warrior) and Koel Purie (Everybody Says I’m Fine) play two unlikely travel companions who meet in Ladakh. She, according to the publicity notes is a “dysfunctional, coke-snorting fashion model” and he is “an ultra-focused, strong silent stranger”.

Chance brings them together in the desert moonscape of Ladakh, a setting Ashvin says adds to the unease of the story.

Ashvin Kumar

Road to Ladakh

Ashvin describes the feel of the film as “Coen brothers, a kind of reality, but not reality. It is about two lost souls meeting in Ladakh.

The man is there with his goals; the girl seems to have none. I have kept an open-ended looseness to the film.

I want people to use their imagination in interpreting the film,” says Ashvin who has set up an UK based film company called Mask media with partner Shomit Mitter.

CAN’T SEE EYE TO EYE: Irfan Khan and Koel Purie star in Road to LadakhAs with all road trips, music plays an important part in Road To Ladakh and the soundtrack of the film has been composed by Susmit Sen and recorded by his band, Indian Ocean. Some of the tracks are from his latest album, Depths of the Ocean.

“This film is a case study for us on how to use European funding and create films in India with Indian talent, using Indian post-production facilities,” says Ashvin. Mask media in fact aims to be a ‘conduit between western funds and Indian talent’.

So why does Kumar wish to be a British filmmaker? “I feel that being in a foreign country gives you an objectivity of your own, and it helps me raise finance and exhibit my films for a wider audience.

The Bollywood influence here is huge, you can try to fight it but it registers in your subconscious.

The world is a large place and the films we make should take cognisance of that. They should be commercially successful but with artistic sensibilities,” he says.

For now though, before he begins his first commercial full-length feature, Ashvin is hoping for a good response from the festival circuit to what he describes as a “labour of love”.