Monday, 9 February 2015

‘Tamanna’ set for international release

08:20 By Lollywood Online No comments

Neo-noir Pakistani-British film Tamanna has been acquired by Britain-based independent distributor Mara pictures and will be released digitally worldwide in March.
Directed by Steven Moore and produced by Sarah Tareen of Concordia Productions, Tamanna is based on Anthony Shaffer’s 1970 play Sleuth. The cast includes Salman Shahid, Mehreen Raheel, Omair Rana and Feryal Gauhar.
Speaking to  The Hollywood Reporter  Sarah Tareen expressed her joy on the deal, “”Pakistan’s film industry and the art of storytelling has dwindled in the half century since partition from India [in 1947]. Tamanna is one of a handful of films released in the last few years, in a period hailed as ‘revival.’ We are excited to bring Tamanna to a global audience.”
The film was in the post production for quite some time before it finally saw a release in Pakistan in June 2014.
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Set in the backdrop of the dying days of Lollywood industry, it is a story of a struggling actor Rizwan Ahmed (Omair Rana) who tries to persuade the once successful actor Mian Tariq Ali (Salman Shahid) to divorce his wife. But in the process one of them loses their life.
One of our earlier stories compared the Urdu adaptation to the British play Sleuth:
“Whilst some of the interactions between the two men are similar to the play Sleuth, the film has roles for not just the Wyke character’s wife, but also his second, younger wife, the Tindel character’s object of desire. The milieu is Pakistan’s film industry, Lollywood in its dying days. The outcome for the characters is dark, with more emphasis on being sacrificed than self sacrifice, and is used an allegory of wider issues. The dialogue, in Urdu, and the scenario are adapted in numerous ways for Pakistani culture.”
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This is not the first time that Sleuth has been adapted to a film. Hollywood has done this twice; first in 1972 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and then in 2007 by Kenneth Branagh. The former was nominated in the academy awards but the second version released to mixed reviews.
Tamanna’s music received positive feedback. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s Koi Dil mein, composed by Sahir Ali Bagga, also won the Best Music Talent in Film award at the 14th South Asian Film Festival. The film was also screened at the London Asian Film Festival (LAFF) last year along with Josh and Good Morning Karachi.
Mara Pictures has earlier released Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur.

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