Trailer launch of ‘Eka’: Silchar’s Siddhant Ghosh’s film around depression and loneliness

Eka is the youngest of three brothers, who lives in a small village. He is mostly lonely as no one befriends him thinking he is cursed. The superstitious belief among the villagers impacts his young mind and he loses his mental stability. He starts living in his own world and a certain reality that he creates inside his head. All this leads to a misfortunate event and that is what the upcoming film “Eka”, written and directed by Silchar’s Siddhant Ghosh, talks about.

Eka revolves around the depressing feeling of being alone, loneliness and Isolation from human companionship. The movie is set and shot in Silchar and from the trailer, it looks gore and dark. Siddhant Ghosh has explored various themes in his first narrative film and has mythological angles as well.

“The idea about writing for this film came out of lockdown,” says Siddhant while speaking to Barak Bulletin, “When I went to Silchar from Mumbai, I wanted to make this time worthwhile. This film is one of the many ideas I have and I wrote the script in very few days.” The young director says all his ideas come from “realism and the place we live in, but a little exaggerated and fictionalised”. Believe it or not, but the entire shooting happened just in two weeks and to maintain the dark theme, there was a fixed timing, about which Siddhant says, “on most days, our shooting started quite late in the afternoon, from around 3 and continued till 8 PM or sometimes even later. For some sequences, the shooting would start as early as 4:30 AM and we wrapped up by 9 AM”.

The director, who not just wrote the script and edited the film, did his graduation in films, but is of the opinion that “art can not be taught in any school or college”. Except for the tech part, Siddhant has learned through experiments and getting inspired by other artists. He says his early influences were Andrei Tarkovsky, Lee Chang Dong, Paul Thomas Anderson and Lijo Jose, to name a few. He further said, “I look up to both world cinemas and regional cinemas alike. There is no particular genre or niche. Learning has no end and I’m still learning through experiments. There are highs and lows but this is a part of the process and I’m still in my initial days and trying to evolve with making films. I enjoy filming and making films is always a good experience for me, nothing excites me more than that”. Before Eka, Siddhant directed two short films but this excites him because this is the first big format film and his first narrative.

The cast of the film is all starrer from Silchar, Subhrajyoti Chakraborty is playing the role of Eka, who is the protagonist of the film. Soumya Das and Pallab Bhattacharjee are playing the role of Abir and Rabi respectively, who are the elder brothers of Eka. Other than the key starring, Sanjay Singha is the associate cinematographer of the film and Shreya Acharjee is working as a production assistant and makeup artist. Parthiv Saha did the on-field sound recording for the film. Mrinmoy Kalita, a Mumbai-based artist from Guwahati, made the original background score and was the music composer of the film. Speaking about filming in Silchar, the filmmaker said, “Silchar has many talents, just the thing is that people from Silchar need to be more collaborative rather than egocentric. But the creative field is growing more than before”.

The release date of the film is not yet set as it is being sent to festivals but the team of Eka, expects people to watch this film and support this movie from our own valley. Speaking about the difficulties of the film Siddhant said, “We had issues with logistics, equipment, managing the production of the shoot, location and others. But everything happened eventually, all the cast and crew being amateurs and first-timers, did their best”. The scope of improvement lies with production management and an improved budget.