I just got an email informing me that the film has been selected in the non-competitive section of the South Asian Film Festival, Bangladesh.
I had submitted my film after one of the festival programmers from India had asked me to send in the film.
The festival is between August 1 and 10 in Dhaka and Chittagong. The screening schedule should be put up on July 25 on the official site.
I’m yet to decide if I should go or not mainly because of the political turmoil in Dhaka. Besides, flying there is too expensive and the only other option is to fly to Kolkata and take a bus or train to Dhaka.
I’m tempted to go there because this is only the second International film festival that the film has been selected for after the Premiere in Chennai.
Now, I don’t feel too bad spending money couriering films around the world. Each time I send through DHL, it costs me Rs.2400.
I remember filling up the entry form of the Milano Film Festival, Italy in the middle of the night and it took me nearly two hours because they had word limits for everything. Once I hit Submit, I got a message saying that the film DVD should reach them within the next 48 hours. It was 2 in the morning. I rushed out to take my bike and rode to the DHL centre near the airport after packing a DVD with the cleanest inlay cards that were available at home. I got there and found out it was going to cost me that much. I wasn’t even carrying that kind of money and since I didn’t have much of a bank balance either, I paid partly by cash and partly by card. They said it would take 3 days to reach Milan, Italy and that was a chance I was willing to take.
And then, I got home to do a little more reading on the festival and I found this link that took me to submission statistics. Some 2400 plus films had been submitted last year. This year, they have 2550 entries.
I read that they would select about 12 feature films in all.
I don’t think I need to do the math to figure out that I just lost 2400 bucks in one night.
Post Script:
The results for the Milano Film Festival will be out on August 1. If you believe in miracles, please pray.
MADRAS INK. 
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