Filmmaker Ranjan Kumar deep dives into his film Champaran Mutton and shares its journey from FTII to the Student Academy Awards 2023.
Bestowed by the Academy that gives out the Oscars each year, Student Academy Award is the most prestigious honour for a film student. Each year, college and university film students from all over the world compete for these international student film awards presented in four categories – Animation, Documentary, Live Action Narrative and Alternative/Experimental.
In 2023, one film from India reached the Semi-Finals stage of the Student Academy Awards in the Narrative category. The film Champaran Mutton was directed by Ranjan Kumar. In an exclusive interview with DNA, Ranjan discussed his film in detail and also shared how his film was selected by his alma mater FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) to represent India at the Student Academy Awards this year.
Champaran Mutton stars Chandan Roy, who gained fame after playing Vikas Shukla in Panchayat, and actress-filmmaker Falak Khan in the lead roles. Giving an insigh into his film based in Bihar during the Covid-19 pandemic, the director said that he has tried to explore the socio-political structure inside a village through the lens of a family who want to cook and enjoy a local Bihari delicacy, Champaran Mutton. “From the starting itself, my idea was to explore the politics inside a village using Mutton as a metaphor”, he said.
Talking about how this was a part of his film direction course at FTII, Ranjan said, “In our final semester, we need to make a diploma film and that’s how we are marked. That is like our final exam. In FTII, there are five courses with ten students each so we formed a team with one student from each division. I was there from Direction and Screen Writing department, Shubham Dilip Ghatage from Sound Recording and Sound Design, Meenakshi Srivastava from Ar Direction and Production Design, Aadhith V. Sathvin from Cinematography, and Vaishnavi Krishnan from Editing department. Each one of us was marked for their respective courses.”
The director further added, “The FTIII guideline is to go and make a film within 200 km of the institute. We shot the film in the Kambleshvar village in the Baramati city in Maharashta, which is around 100 km away from our campus in Pune. As per the rules, we need to make our film within 9 days, including 8 days of shoot of 8 hours each and one day as a leave since we are provided camera, lightmen, carpenters, painters, transport, and everything by the FTII.”
Champaran Mutton poster
Ranjan Kumar and his team including Aadith V Sathvin, Meenakshi Srivastava, Shubham Dilip Ghatge, and Vaishnavi Krishnan
“After our film is finished after shoot and post-production, a screening happens in which the FTII professors and staff watch and discuss all the ten films. Then, after the screening, a FTII panel chooses which films to send for which international film festivals like Berlinale or Cannes. So, this year my film Champaran Mutton was chosen to be sent at the Student Academy Awards and it luckily got shortlisted among the seventeen other films in the Semi-Finals, but we couldn’t make it among the final eight nominations”, Ranjan concluded.
Ranjan Kumar also share with DNA that his biggest language while making Champaran Mutton was that it is the first ever film made in Bajjika, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in some parts of Bihar. He concluded that after getting selected at the Student Academy Awards, his film is currently being screened at other international film festivals and will be made available for watching soon.
