Hazelnut Media, the Singapore-based impact production company, has acquired international rights to “Pinjar,” the Bengali feature directed by Kolkata physician and filmmaker Dr. Rudrajit Roy, and will amplify the film’s release through a real-world initiative backing education for girls in rural West Bengal.
The film is set to open in Indian theaters on July 10.
The deal was marked in Kolkata with a white dove release ceremony, drawing on the film’s central motif of liberation.
Produced by Chasing Dreams Films in association with Bell Jar Films, “Pinjar” – which translates as “The Cage” – centers on five characters whose lives are bound together by a shared inability to break free. Tarak is a bird-catcher who survives by trapping the very flight he cannot attain; his daughter Jhimli comes of age in a world that constrains her before she can find her bearings. Paromita, a widowed teacher, conceals her loneliness behind the cover of duty and routine, while Shefali, a working wife, hides her bruises beneath concealer and silence. Iqbal, a migrant Muslim man, drifts through a city that withholds its welcome. Threading through all their stories is a wild bird – stolen from the forest, peddled in markets, caged in a home – whose restlessness becomes an emblem of every character’s longing to be free.
