The Best of SIFF 2011

Related Content

• The Weekly Wire: This Week's Recommended Events
  March 28, 2012
• The Weekly Wire: This Week's Recommended Events
  April 11, 2012
• SIFF: Week 1 Picks & Pans
  May 16, 2012
• New SIFF Review: Gandu
  June 7, 2011
• Gandu
  June 8, 2011

More About

• Brian Miller
• Wong Kar-wai
• Satyajit Ray
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

In case you couldn't catch absolutely every movie during SIFF, which ended last weekend, the fest is reprising 12 of its favorites this weekend. At 5:30 p.m. Friday, Gandu self-consciously strives to avoid every Bollywood trope and trace of Satyajit Ray. In Kolkata, Bengal, former video and commercials director Q frames his story in stark black-and-white. Gandu is about 20, fatherless and resentful of his mother’s lover. When the latter two have sex, Gandu crawls across their bedroom floor like an insect to steal some cash. Out on the street, he throws down Bengali hip-hop rhymes and posts his graffiti tag in dilapidated alleyways. At a certain point, embarking on a road trip with a Bruce Lee-obsessed rickshaw driver (simply named Rickshaw), Gandu is introduced to heroin smoking and undergoes a kind of cognitive break. Suddenly he’s a famous rapper or rocker; suddenly he can have sex, in color, with a red-wigged girl straight out of a Wong Kar-wai movie. Is it just another screen fantasy? Gandu isn’t saying—it’s all provocation, attitude, longing, and self-disgust. We also recommend On the Ice (5:30 p.m. Sat.) See SIFF website for full schedule. (NR) BRIAN MILLER
June 17-19, 2011