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29 Jan – 8 Feb 2026

Mani Kaul

Mani KAUL (1944-2011, India) studied screenwriting and directing at Rajasthan College in Jaipur and at the Film Institute of India in Pune. He made a name for himself as an abstract painter. His first film Uski roti (1969), shot on location in a Punjab village, was well-received by critics. It won the debutant director the 1970 Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie and film critic Derek Malcolm named Uksi roti in The Guardian “one of the key films of the new Indian cinema of the time”. In 1973 he made Duvidha/In Two Minds, his first film in colour. After that, he worked with forbidding regularity on an imposing oeuvre in both fiction and documentary. Mani Kaul passed away in July 2011 in Gurgaon, near Delhi, at the age of 67. At IFFR 2022, Mani Kaul features in Loubna Régragui’s documentary The Nine Lakh Stars (2022), next to the screening of his masterpiece Duvidha (1973), as part of the Cinema Regained programme.

Filmography

(selection) Uski roti/A Day’s Bread (1970), Aashad Ka Ek Din/A Monsoon Day (1971), Duvidha/In Two Minds (1973), The Nomad Puppeteers (1974), Chitrakathi (1977), Satah Se Uthata Aadmi/Rising from the Surface (1980), Arrival (1980), Dhrupad (1982), The Desert of a Thousand Lines (1981), Mati Manas/Mind of Clay (1985), Before My Eyes (1988, short), Aangan Birha (1988), Siddeshwari (1989), Nazar (1990), The Idiot (1992), The Cloud Door (1994, short), Ik ben geen ander/I Am No Other (2002, doc), A Monkey’s Raincoat (2005, doc)

More info: Wikipedia, Mani Kaul

Mani Kaul at IFFR

  • Nazar

    Mani Kaul | 92' | India | -

  • The Idiot

    Mani Kaul | 184' | India | -

    The film is based no Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. The action has been moved to contemporary Bombay, but the names of the characters and the essence…

  • The Servant’s Shirt

    Mani Kaul | 105' | India | World premiere

    Intimate yet tragi-comic feature in which people in different hierarchical relationships force servility on each other in Sixties India when democracy

  • Ashad ka ek din

    Mani Kaul | 143' | India | -

  • Duvidha

    Mani Kaul | 82' | India | -

  • Uski roti

    Mani Kaul | 110' | India | -

    Groundbreaking, powerful debut about a woman who, every day, hands her husband his lunch at a bus stop. One day she is late.

  • Arrival

    Mani Kaul | 22' | India | -

  • Satah se uthata aadmi

    Mani Kaul | 114' | India | -

  • The Servant’s Shirt