Amdavadi’s directorial debut Nameplate to be screened at Kolkata International Film Festival

Ahmedabad origin writer and director Preet’s debut Hindi feature film Nameplate (2019) starring FTII alumnus Saurabh Saraswat and NSD alumnus and Allahabad-based actress Vartika Tiwari has been officially selected for the Kolkata International Film Festival in the category: Competition of Indian Languages’ films.
It would premiere on November 10 and would be screened again on November 12 at the 25th edition of the festival that would be inaugurated on November 8 and culminate on November 15 with the announcements of awards for those movies to be screened in the competitive category.
Interestingly, Saurabh who often comes to Ahmedabad for his play Shree Aur Blue has worked with Preet, who has been living in Pune for a decade now, for the latter’s first short 30-minute feature film Gray that was screened at Cannes and at least 40 other international film festivals. “My film Cat Sticks directed by Ronny Sen on a rainy night in Kolkata would be screened too at KIFF on November 9 and 11 in ‘International Competition: Innovation in Moving Images’,” Saurabh tells Ahmedabad Times.

Providing details of Nameplate, he says, “It’s a very sweet story of a couple who want to buy a home and was shot in Pune.” When contacted Preet, who did his schooling from Ahmedabad, said, “The story is very relatable as it is about common man. It portrays how a husband and a wife who have lived their entire life in a rented house finally plan to buy a house and invest a lot in its planning but are in a fix on realising at the last moment that the loan has been postponed for two years.”
Preet’s debut Gujarati movie for which he is in talks with A-listers of Dhollywood says, “As it would be my first Gujarati commercial film, we plan to announce and market it properly. Casting of the lead actress is done and she is like a family to us but we cannot reveal more until everything is finalised formally. Talks are also on with a leading actor of Dhollywood and the movie would be made in Gujarati, Marathi and Punjabi.”
On what took him so long to make a Gujarati film, considering it is his mother tongue, the MIT, Pune alumnus, says, “It is hard to get funds when you are an independent filmmaker. However, when I went to Pune, I got a lot of support for a Marathi project and my journey began.” Giving details about his upcoming Gujarati project, he says, “It would be a family drama on how a newly-married couple wants to live separately from their parents and the twists and the turns.”