Screenplay: Prashant Nair
Cinematographer: Petra Korner
Editing: Xavier Box, Patricia Rommel
Sound: Christian Conrad
Music: Dustin O'Halloran
Casting: Suraj Sharma, Toni Revolori, Prateik Babbar, Smita Tambe, Pramod Pathak
Production: Khayum Studios
Distribution:
ARP
13 rue Jean Mermoz
75008 Paris
France
Tel: 0033 1 56 69 26 00
www.arpselection.com
Year: 2015
DCP, Color, 100 min, OV hindi with French subtitles
We are in India in the late 1970s. The whole village of Jivatpur is tuned by the arrival of postcards and letters sent by Udai, who left for the USA to fulfill his mother’s dream.
Times goes by and no more letters are received. Ramakant, who was seven years old when his adulated elder brother left Jivatpur, is now a young man also leaving for the USA.
“Umrika was born from my desire to explore two questions I have been confronting in my whole life. It is firstly about what makes some people live in countries other than their own, independently of their will. I wanted to talk of immigration, but not through any evocation of struggle and hardship faced by people when they decide to leave for abroad. I wanted to tell what happens before the decision of immigrating is taken. I wanted to tell the story of someone who leaves home for a reason which is not related to war, hunger, persecution, or to the desire to make a fortune.” Prashant Nair.
