Jayasundara To Grow Some ‘Mushrooms’ in Directors’ Fortnight

Bappaditya Bandopadhyay, producer of Sri Lankan filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara’s third feature film Mushrooms announced today that the film will be part of the Directors’ Fortnight selection, which is set to be officially unveiled in about T-minus 36 hours. Jayasundara’s debut film The Forsaken Land did quite well for itself when it premiered in Cannes in 2005, winning the Camera d’Or for best debut feature. His next film, Between Two Worlds, premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, and while it didn’t win anything, it’s picked up some heavy acclaim from the few who have seen it (filmmaker Dan Sallitt lists it in his Top 10 list for 2009).

Mushrooms cast includes Hollywood actor Darwin Shaw (Casino Royale, Prince of Persia), who will apparently play a Spanish soldier in the film, as well as Bengali actress Paoli Dam (Kaalbela). Few details are known about the plot so far for this sampling of South Asian film, but this is a very exciting inclusion in the Fortnight, as Jayasundara is exactly the kind of rising auteur that the sidebar excels in showcasing.