DEVAKI- has traveled to 11 International Film Festival & has been stated as a 'must watch for every woman'

"Once in a while, someone decides to do a reality check, and make a film about an event that disturbs him or her. Devaki is one such film, based on a true story from rural India, where a woman was sold off for a price of Rs: 5000/-. It is indeed appal  " - Dr.P.V.Vaidyanathan 

Cast : Ram Kapur,Suman Ranganathan, Arvin Tucker,Perizaad Zorabian,Neelanjan Bose,George Baker,Raman Kapoor
Crew : Director: Bappaditya Bandopadhyay / Producer: K.D. Singh, Toubro Infotech Industries / Screenplay: Ashish Roy / Cinematography: Rana Dasgupta / Editors: Uttam Roy, Rajeev Jhaveri,Shakeel /Music: Bikram Ghosh, Amar Haldipur, P. Sameer

Once in a while, someone decides to do a reality check, and make a film about an event that disturbs him or her. Devaki is one such film, based on a true story from rural India, where a woman was sold off for a price of Rs: 5000/-. It is indeed appalling that even today, though we consider ourselves evolved and civilized, such things do happen. And it is to the director's credit that he has gone ahead and made a film on this subject, knowing fully well that such a film probably will not fetch him much returns commercially.

Devaki is the story of two women, Nandini (Perizaad Zorabian) and Devaki (Suman Ranganathan). Nandini is a city bred modern day girl, whose father has left her and her mother years ago. Tired of leading an unsatisfying life in the city, she joins an NGO and goes into the village, to try and educate the villagers. Here, she instantly bonds to Devaki, a lower caste uneducated girl. Devaki too is overawed by Nandini, and looks up to her for everything.

Devaki's father, because of his poverty is forced to marry her off to an old, impotent seventy year old. Nandini tries in vain to stop the marriage. Nandini goes back to the city, where her mentally ill mother and her two timing boyfriend await her. She finds a job in her estranged father's firm. The two women keep in touch with each other by post. Devaki is subject to rape and humiliation in the village, with the connivance of her husband and his previous three wives. She falls for a lower caste boy of her age, for which she is severely punished and auctioned off.

On the other hand, Nandini undergoes an equal amount of humiliation and despair in the city, as she realises that women's plight everywhere is more or less the same. Her condition is as good or as bad as that of Devaki. The film ends with Devaki getting punished and being auctioned off to the highest bidder, and Nandini being asked to sell herself and her morals, by her own father.

The film, which runs for 100 minutes (mostly in English), has received plenty of nominations and recognitions abroad, though it has had a delayed release here. The film is slow, and drags in parts. The idea of drawing a parallel, between the lives of women in rural and urban India is a very good one, and will definitely make all of us think whether we have really evolved and matured as much as we think we have.

The film lacks technical finesse, and could do with an overall improvement in the sound and voicing department. Of the cast, both Perizaad and Suman deliver excellent performances, while Arvin Tucker is badly cast, as he is too anglicised and Westernised to pass off as a lower caste rebel. The rest of the cast is well chosen, and the village milieu is well created.

The film is very likely to make one sit up and think, and those among us who are socially conscious and active will definitely like to take up cudgels on issues such as this. Unfortunately, the film has no great commercial value, and is likely to disappear from the theatres without much of a whimper.

FESTIVALS : The film was premiered at the Osian Cinefan Asian Film Festival in July 2005. Since then it has traveled to 11 International Film Festival amidst much critical accolades and has been touted as a 'must watch for every woman'. Nominated for the best feature film at Sao Paulo International Film Festival, Brazil, Ashville International Film Festival,NC, Global Knight International Film Festival, Malta, and Golden Gate International Film Festival,SF, it won the award in Asheville. Officially released in 6 January 2006, this small film has been doing the rounds in the video stores for some time.[2] The plot is derived from a real life incident where a tribal woman named Devakibai was sold in an open auction in Pandhana, a sub-division of Khandwa district in Madhya Pradesh, in January 2003. The auction was organized by the Maha Panchayat Panchaganga and legitimized by the presence of Hiralal Silawat, Minister of Fisheries, who inaugurated the function. This atrocity was uncovered by journalist Deepak Tiwari and became the cover story of the magazine, The Week

Best Feature Film Award at the Asheville Film Festival-North Carolina-U.S.A