Kamya N's Lailaa Manju is a film about a daughter coming out to her mother, set in a pandemic-fuelled Mumbai.
Lailaa Manju, a crowdfunded film directed by the independent filmmaker Kamya N, was screened at the ongoing 14th Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, South Asia’s biggest LGBTQ+ film festival, on Saturday, June 10. The film received a phenomenal response with thundering applause from the audience.
The queer-made film was shown at Mumbai's iconic Liberty Cinema in the presence of its cast and crew, and lyricist, writer, comedian, and filmmaker Varun Grover, whose short film Kiss was also screened at the festival which began on Wednesday, June 7 and will last till Sunday, June 11.
Expressing gratitude towards the great response the film received, Kamya shares, “It was surreal! The response from the audience after the screening was really overwhelming. To finally see that the people from all across could resonate with the gaze of a woman and LBGTQ+ community, seemed so unreal. This was a dream come true! Not just the audience, even the support and acceptance we have received today from the voices within the entertainment industry makes me feel that we are on the right path. I’m very grateful and stoked!”
Kamya, is a freelance writer-director who dreams of being a filmmaker with a chance of making and being a part of important stories. A woman filmmaker with a gaze so different from that of the society, she was industry initiated through a brief stint as an associate producer with Viacom18’s OTT platform, Voot. This led her to work with boutique production houses writing short films and acting.
Lailaa Manju is a film about a daughter coming out to her mother, set in a pandemic-fuelled Mumbai. It is a coming-out story of the times we were living in. An emotionally riveting, 60-minute mini-feature film about the universal coming out conundrum and how it’s different for the Indian queer.
Kamya is also in race for the newly instituted award from this year - the Ismat Chughtai Award for Best Indian Woman Filmmaker, instituted in memory of eminent Indian Urdu novelist, short story writer, liberal humanist and filmmaker Ismat Chughtai, by her grandson and filmmaker Ashish Sawhny.
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 "Lailaa Manju cast and crew")
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