Cold Ashes Can Cause Forest Fires
Uma (13) has a strained relationship with her father who manages a hotel in a small mountain town in the Himalayas. When family friends from Delhi visit them during Christmas holidays, Uma suspects an affair between her father and his friend's wife. Deeply distressed, she pledges to punish the two adults and manipulates her friend Kali (12) into participating in a cruel plan whose consequences will have disastrous effects for both the families as well as the hotel...
What have you achieved so far with the BoostNL programme?
The BoostNL programme made us realise the importance of how to pitch our project strategically to an international market and to identify the right target audience. We can admit we were in a closed bubble regarding the relevance of our project and when we started presenting it to others during the course of this programme, it became clear how impactful the right positioning tends to be for the subject. The pitch training sessions with Álvaro Vega were immensely helpful and resulted in giving us the 'savoir-faire' of how we are going to present our project at the coming international markets.
What would be your ideal next steps for your project?
2024 is going to be a crucial year for our film - we intend to apply for eligible production funds in France and India and in the countries of the other minority European co-producers that we will identify starting from the market at IFFR. We would simultaneously be trying to get a French TV channel onboard and also travel to at least one feature lab with the project. Since the shoot is planned for winter of 2025, we will start preliminary casting in mid 2024 as finding the right cast for the two teenage girls will be a challenging ordeal.
Ashmita Guha Neogi, director
Avantika Singh Desbouvries, producer
