The world premiere of Ajitpal Singh’s debut Hindi feature, Fire In The Mountains at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival 2021 got a heart-warming response from the audience.
Film buffs expressed their love on social media after watching the premiere screening at Sundance Film Festival 2021.
Held online, the World Premiere was followed by an engaging Q & A zoom session with debutant filmmaker Ajitpal Singh, lead actors, Vinamrata Rai and Chandan Bisht, cinematographer Dominique Colin, and others.
Followed by the world premiere, a Satellite Screening of the film organised was held at the historic Starlite Drive-in Wichita. The drive-in screening was followed by Q and A with the director, Ajitpal Singh moderated by Lela Meadow-Conner, founder of mama.film which organised the screening in collaboration with Sundance.
The self-taught filmmaker and writer-director whose short film Rammat-Gammat won Special Mention at the International Short Film Festival of Oberhausen 2018, says, "I have waited for this day for a decade. I started dreaming of making films when my first script was selected at Sundance Screenwriters Lab 2012. It has been a long journey but I am really happy to premiere my first feature at the Sundance Film Festival".
Fire in the Mountains is the only film from Indian and South Asia to be competing among 10 films in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section which presents emerging filmmaking talents from around the world who offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.
The 82-minute family drama, Fire In The Mountains is about a mother who toils to save money to build a road in a remote Himalayan village to take her wheelchair-bound son for physiotherapy but her husband who believes that a shamanic ritual is the remedy, steals her savings.
The film stars Vinamrata Rai in the central role of the mother along with Chandan Bisht and Sonal Jha, introducing first-time young actors from Uttarakhand, Harshita Tewari and Mayank Singh Jaira. The Jar Pictures production, Fire In The Mountains is produced by Ajay Rai and Alan McAlex and co-produced by Mauli Singh and Amit Mehta.