Lolita Chatterjee's last film to be screened at KIFF

In her career spanning five decades, she wanted to be taken seriously as an actor. While shooting for Jonaki, Lolita Chatterjee, who debuted in 1964 with Bibhas opposite Uttam Kumar, would keep telling director Aditya Vikram Sengupta about it. The actor, who was leading her second childhood in the ripe old age of 80 as she shot for the film in December 2016 and again in June 2017, would often ask for a drag if she saw her unit members lighting up a smoke and sip a glass of brandy to be camera-ready on a cold, winter evening. As her final wish, she wanted her city to see her work. In keeping with this thought, Aditya, whose film received one of the top honours at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, sprang into action at the last minute. With only a few days to go for the 24th

Kolkata International Film Festival

, he told who else, but the industry — Prosenjit Chatterjee — about it. When Prosenjit heard about the deceased actor’s last wish, he went all out to get Jonaki a special screening. The film was already on the wish list of the festival committee, but its inclusion in MAMI came in the way of the India premiere at KIFF. But since the film has Lolita Chatterjee in the lead, the festival’s think tanks got together to make a screening possible. The film has now found place in the Special Screening section of the festival, which is organised every year for a cause. In the same section, Shoojit Sircar’s October, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Czechmate: In Search of Jiri Menzel — the longest documentary to be cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification — and Sanjoy Nag’s Yours Truly with Soni Razdan will be screened. I hear Mahesh Bhatt is coming down to present his wifey’s film to the Kolkata audience. With all this and more, the festival is going to be a talking point — not for nothing.