Woodstock School alumnus Shubhashish Bhutiani’s debut film Kush based on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, will receive its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.
The young film director will rub shoulders with actors like George Clooney and Sandra Bullock and director Alfonso Cuaron at the event in Italy. Shubhashish, who attended Woodstock from Class V through XII graduating in 2009, returned to Mussoorie recently to show the film to current staff and students at the school. Shubhashish was inspired to make the film after Woodstock teacher Shonila Chander talked about the riots in an economics class, and how she was forced to hide a Sikh student on the bus as they returned to Mussoorie from a field trip in Jaipur.
He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York after Woodstock, and said he was pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction to the film. “I didn’t expect the film to have this much interest, but what’s nice is that both Indian and Western cultures have connected with it. It’s the only Indian film to be shown at Venice and I’m the youngest director there. All this was unexpected, but it’s a story with universal themes — prejudice exists everywhere.”
The film was shot on a shoestring budget of Rs 8,00,000 in Mumbai and in the Borivali National Park. It has been widely acclaimed so far, and was named outstanding film at this year’s Dusty Film and Animation Festival in New York, and took the best innovative budget prize at the United Kingdom Trade and Investment Film Awards. It will be shown in the New Trends in World Cinema category at Venice this Friday and Saturday.