Major festivals across the world have joined hands for a 10-day-long event, We Are One, that will be streaming on YouTube from 29 May to 7 June. The event has been organised by YouTube and Tribeca Enterprises, which organises the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, to raise funds for the battle against coronavirus.
Four Indian productions have been selected for the We Are One event. Among them are Prateek Vats’ award-winning Eeb Allay Ooo! and Arun Karthick’s Nasir. The other two selections are short films Awake and Natkhat.
Eeb Allay Ooo! will be streamed on 30 May at 4.30pm for a 24-hour period. Shaan Vyas’s Natkhat, which stars Vidya Balan, will be streamed only once, on 2 June at 4.30pm.
Nasir will be streamed on 6 June at 7pm, and will be available for a week even after the end of the online festival. This is also the case with Atul Mongia’s short film Awake, which will be available for a week after its premiere on 7 June at 4.30pm.
The Indian selections have been previously shown at the MAMI festival.
Recently, four members from the board of trustees - Vishal Bhardwaj, Zoya Akhtar, Kabir Khan and Vikramaditya Motwane - spoke to festival director Anupama about the selections and were all praise for the choices. Vishal said, “I would absolutely recommend Eeb Allay Ooo. After a long time I have seen such a beautiful film coming out of India. Also, I loved Ishika in Awake.”
Vikramaditya chose Eeb Allay Ooo! and Nasir. As for Zoya, she showered praises on the lead actor of Eeb Allay Ooo!, Shardul Bhardwaj.
“The We Are One initiative by Tribeca Enterprises is a humble and sincere attempt to bring about some relief to audiences across continents,” MAMI chairperson Deepika Padukone said in a statement.
The films streaming as part of We Are One have been shown at some of the major festivals in the world, including Tribeca, Cannes, Venice, Berlin, London, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, Marrakech, San Sebastian, Toronto and Tokyo.
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