Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's Malayalam film Chola to be screened at 2019 Venice Film Festival

Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s upcoming Malayalam feature Chola or Shadow of Water (in English) has been selected for the 2019 edition of Venice Film Festival. The film will be screened at the Orizzonti section, which runs parallel to the main competition category, reports Hindustan Times. The festival line-up does not boast of any other Indian films under this section. Notably, Sohum Shah’s fantasy-horror Tummbad (2018) became the first ever Indian film to open the prestigious Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week. [caption id=“attachment_7094831” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  A still from Chola/ Shadow of Water. Twitter[/caption] According to a ScreenDaily report, Chola is a magic-realist drama that “follows two teenagers who run away to visit the big city, but end up having to spend the night in a bare-bones motel, where their nightmare begins.” The film, HT states, will compete with 19 other titles under Orrizonti. The other films screened under this category include Théo Court’s Spanish drama White on White, Chinese film Balloon (helmed by Pema Tseden), Iranian social film 6.5 per Meter and Hava, Maryam, Ayesha by Sahraa Karimi_._  Sasidharan is best known for his 2017 film, Sexy Durga. The movie won the Hivos Tiger Award at the 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Golden Apricot at Armenia’s Yerevan International Film Festival as well as the Best International Feature Film award at the Guanajuato International Film Festival in Mexico. The film was initially denied a censor certificate, but later hit screens on March 2018, reports Scroll.  Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth will  open the event . Starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke, this is Kore-eda’s first non-Japanese project and the follow-up to his Palme d’Or-winning film  Shoplifters . The Burnt Orange Heresy by Giuseppe Capotondi will be the closing film. The Venice Film Festival will take place from 28 August to 7 September.