Siddharth,  a film by Canada-based filmmaker Richie Mehta has been selected for Venice Days, an independent sidebar of the Venice International Film Festival.

Started in 2004, as an independent event on the fringes of the Venice Film Festival, modeled on the ‘Directors´ Fortnight´ of the Cannes Festival and promoted by the associations of Italian film directors and authors, The 10th edition of Venice Days will beheld from August 28 to September 7, 2013.

The film features Naseeruddin Shah, Rajesh Tailang, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Anurag Arora, Shobha Sharma Jassi and Geeta Agarwal Sharma.

The film revolves around Mahendra who works on street corners as a chain-wallah (a zipper-fixer), while his wife Suman stays at home with their two young children, twelve-year-old Siddharth and his sister. To contribute to the family income, the boy is sent far away from home, from New Delhi to Ludhiana, where a relative has a job for him and a place to sleep. It seems like a dream come true to his father, until he realizes that his son has vanished into thin air: kidnapped, perhaps, or dead. Mahendra learns how confusing the world beyond his front door really is, but that doesn’t stop him from stubbornly seeking Siddharth all over India, its cities and countryside combined.

About Siddharth, the festival website mentions“The film builds on the emotions of one man´s painful awakening, and shows a different, almost neo-realist India, described with that ingredient of universal humanity that is Italian film´s gift to the world,”