Shimla film ‘Amar Colony’ to have French touch

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, September 3

French award-winning music composer Marc Marder will compose music for a Shimla-based film, ‘Amar Colony’. The movie is a story of three women who live a life of regret and loneliness in the hills of Shimla.

Inspired by british era building

A dilapidated wooden structure, Titla Hotel, in Jakhu, inspired me to write the script of this film. The building built during the British era houses several families and I was curious to know about them. — Siddharth Chauhan, Director

Written and directed by local lad Siddharth Chauhan and produced by Nisheeth Kumar from Indie Film Collective, the film is at its post-production stage right now. Siddharth has earlier directed several documentaries and short films.

A one-and-a-half hour film, Amar Colony is story of three neighbours living in a mysterious chawl. Emancipation is the central theme of Amar Colony, which explores feelings like love, regret, emptiness and fight for fulfilling the desires through the characters and their intertwined lives in this film.

The film is shot in a span of 30 days at different locations in Shimla, including YWCA, US Club, Shimla General Post Office (Mall Road), St Thomas School, Oak Tree House (Bharari), Lower Bazaar, Sabzi Mandi and Baldeyan on the outskirts of the town.

“A dilapidated wooden structure, Titla Hotel, in Jakhu, adjacent to my house inspired me to write the script of this film. The building built during the British era houses several families and I was curious to know about the families and thought of exploring the subject,” says Siddharth.

“Having Marc on board for this film is a dream come true, says Siddharth. Marc has composed music for over 100 films and eight of his films have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the past few years.

Siddharth has experimented with both fictional and realistic issues.

His first film was ‘Zunie’, followed by ‘Peace is Nowhere’, ‘Boys Don’t Wear Nail Polish’, ‘Infinite Space’, ‘Papa’, Pahari film ‘Pashi’ and ‘The Flying Trunk’.

Amar Colony features an ensemble cast with Nimisha Nair (Delhi); Sangeeta Agrawal (US); Sreejith Vijay (Kerala); Ayush Shrivastava and Rohit Agrawal (Mumbai); and Deepak Sharma, Usha Chauhan, Yash Thakur, Anuj Sharma and Vandana Thakur (Shimla).

The film was made with the help of 10 crew members from Shimla, including Ish Sharma, Ankit Rathore, Chahat Arora, Disha Bhardwaj, Adarsh Sehra, Akshay Kumar, Akshit Vashisht, Diksha Rathore and Pooja Jeeran.

Hailing from Rohru, Siddharth holds a Master’s degree in Business management (MBA). He has been brought up in Shimla.