Video excerpts, war stories about the making of, concerns about distribution, ringing cell phones and crying babies is how the DVD launch of festival fav Vanaja went down at Borders (NYC) on Friday. As Rajnesh Domalpalli (director) smiled his way through the proceedings, someone in the audience remarked “it looks like you are watching the movie for the first time”.

The film is in its second year on the festival circuit (112 festivals at last count), but distributors in India have predictably shied away. The infamous censor board’s demand for nine cuts, and the director’s reluctance to comply have further complicated the distribution prospects.

Rajnesh shared some interesting tidbits with a diverse audience at the dvd release:

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Nandita Das is the most beautiful actor in Indian cinema. Well, may be she’s got some competition now. She gives yet another heart warming performance in this Pakistani film based on true events, highlighting the plight of innocent people caught on the wrong side of the contentious border between India and Pakistan.

An ironical twist is that the family caught in this web is a Hindu dalit family living on the Pakistani side of the fence:

The singular theme of the film is how a child from Pakistan aged eight years learns to cope with the trauma of forced separation from his mother (Nandita Das) while being held prisoner, along with his father in the jail of a country i.e. India, which is hostile to his own, while on the other side of the border, the wife-mother, devastated by their sudden disappearance builds a new chapter of her life, by her solitary struggle for sheer survival.

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