The movie made its World Premiere at the 21st Busan International Film Festival, 2016 and Indian Premiere at the 18th Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI)

Haoban Paban Kumar’s debut feature in Manipuri language, ‘Lady of the Lake’ will be making its European Premiere at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, one of the world’s most celebrated film festivals to be held from 9-19 February 2017.

It will be screened in the ‘International Forum of New Cinema’, which is considered to be the most daring section of the Berlinale featuring avant-garde, experimental works, political reportage and yet-to-be-discovered cinematic landscapes.

Lady of  the Lake starring real life couples Ningthoujam Sanatomba and Sagolsam Thambasang is a story about a depressed fisherman, Tomba who gets a gun accidentally. He marvels with the gun as his power of self-protection. He transforms himself to an assertive man who believes that guns can solve all problems. 

The movie was shot entirely in Loktak Lake – the largest fresh water lake in North East India, which has a unique ecosystem, where people live on floating huts, built on floating biomass called Phumdis.

Directed and produced by Haoban Paban Kumar, ‘Lady of the Lake’ made its World Premiere in the category Asian New Currents (Competition Section) at the 21st Busan International Film Festival 2016. 

Haoban Paban Kumar

The film was screened in over 10 prestigious international and national film festivals and won 4 awards including Golden Gateway Award (For the Best Indian Film) at 18th Mumbai Film Festival 2016 (MAMI), where it had its Indian Premiere and was selected in the Indian Panorama at 47th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa. The film won NETPAC Award (Asian Select) at the 22nd Kolkata International Film Festival, 2016 and recently won the Special Jury Award at the 15th Pune International Film Festival 2017.

Delighted on Berlinale being the 11th Film Festival of his debut feature length movie, award-winning documentary filmmaker Haoban Paban Kumar says, “I have been making documentaries for the last 10-12 years. But when you do your first fiction feature film you are under lot of pressure. I am lucky that my film got its World Premiere in the Competition section of the prestigious 21st Busan International Film Festival 2016 and now it is having its European Premiere at the prestigious 67th Berlin International Film Festival 2017.