The Gange Sur Seine Festival in Paris is set to start from October 9 and go on till October 13. Sekhar Das ‘s Pagla Ghora (Wild Horse), a film adaptation of Badal Sircar ‘s celebrated play, will be the inaugural film of the Gange Sur Seine Festival in Paris. It will screen at the Club de l’Étoile as the playwright’s birth centenary is marked.
“The Paris premiere, therefore, is not an ending or even a destination.
It is the first major step of a much longer journey,” he said. The film unfolds over one night in a cremation ground in a remote West Bengal forest. Four men wait for the last rites of a young woman who died by suicide. As her body burns, they play cards, drink and trade stories about the women in their lives, while her spectral presence listens in, unseen. The cast includes Gargee Roychowdhury , Sujan Mukhopadhyay, Rajatava Dutta , Jayanta Hore and Rwitobroto Mukherjee. It is produced by Dr Prabir Bhaumik of Swabhumi Entertainment. Actor Rajatava Dutta framed the screening as a beginning.
It feels like a homecoming of sorts,” he said, noting that Sircar himself spent a period of his life in the city. The film has had a private screening in Cannes this year at the invitation of Angénieux, but Paris, Das said, allows it to reach a much wider audience. He said the film asks audiences to look beyond appearances, particularly at how men are conditioned to suppress vulnerability. “Yet denied pain does not disappear; it can emerge as anger, isolation, fractured relationships and consequences affecting women, families and society,” he said. Actor Gargee Roychowdhury said Das pushed her to explore the material beyond its stage origins, and she welcomed the film’s selection for the festival’s competitive section. “And now, the moment has come to let our Pagla Ghora our ‘mad horse’ run free,” she said. Sujan Mukhopadhyay, who plays Kartik Compounder, said he never saw the landmark original production directed by Shombhu Mitra. It is an Indian work in the truest sense,” he said.
For director Das, the Paris slot carries personal weight. “This is not simply another festival screening. He hopes the film travels across India after Paris. “The narrative is not merely a Bengali play.