Gujarati film ‘The Good Road’ picked to represent India in Oscars


Ahmedabad, 21 September 2013

Gujarati film ‘The Good Road’ is India’s official entry to Oscars this year. The film was picked by a committee appointed by the Film Federation of India (FFI), which was led by celebrated Bengali filmmaker Gautam Ghose. Here are some quick facts on the movie:

-Film ‘The Good Road’ is a Gujarati film with English subtitles.

-The entire film was captured in Kutch district of Gujarat.

-Only well-known actor in the film was Sonali Kulkarni who has worked in mainstream Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati films. She played a mother of lost child in this film.

-The film is adult film – perhaps the first Gujarati adult film. However there’s nothing sexy about it. The film is adult because of dirty language used by various characters. Interestingly the main character of this adult film is 7-8 years old child. Also there are more than dozen teen age girls playing roles of prostitutes in this film. Majority of these under-aged characters speak dirty language throughout the film.

-The film is about husband wife and their boy traveling to Kutch. The boy stepped out from the car when his father was out to take a cigarette, and his mother was sleeping in car. The boy missed the car and sat in a truck. He spent a day and night with truck until the truck faced accident. His mother father with the help of police were searching him throughout the day and night. His mother fainted in the middle of Rann during search operation. She was rescued by local.

-The film has parallel plot of a girl who has missed the bus and wants to go to her grand mother’s house. In the middle of road she lands in a highway-side den of prostitutes.

-There’s no connection between two stories that run parallel through the film.

-The film released in major multiplexes in Ahmedabad in July this year, but didn’t get good response. Most of the theaters were completely empty and some shows had to be canceled. The film couldn’t survive on screen for a week.

-The film has been made by debut feature filmmaker Gyan Correa.

-The people of Gujarat only came to know about this film when it won the national award even before its release.

-After its screening in Mumbai, there was some resistance against the film in Kutch where it was shot. The people of Kutch believed that the scenes showing teen age prostitute girls are not part of the culture of Kutch. They believed the scenes were anyway irrelevant to main track of the story and could be removed.