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.