Filmmaker Bhargav Saikia to direct multii-lingual horror-fantasy feature film 'Bokshi'

Guwahati, Sept 3: Filmmaker Bhargav Saikia on Friday announced that he will direct a multi-lingual horror-fantasy feature film titled 'Bokshi'.

Saikia, who had won accolades for his short film 'The Black Cat', based on a Ruskin Bond short story, told PTI that he will begin shooting the film this month in the picturesque locations across Darjeeling and Sikkim.

Saikia said the film has an intriguing tagline 'A witch is born twice' which hints that the story revolves around witchcraft and supernatural.

"Bokshi is an eco-feminist coming-of-age drama set in the mystical wilderness of Northeast India. It's an unsettling take on the folk horror genre", he added.

The film, produced by Saikia's Lorien Motion Pictures and written by Harsh Vaibhav, will have Mansi Multani and Prasanna Bisht in lead roles.

Multani, whose previous credits include "Pari", "Kadakh" and the Netflix/BBC series "A Suitable Boy", said, "'Bokshi', through its palette of fantastical realism, represents this unknown for me as an actor and as a woman of this century".

"As I embark on this journey, I am deeply curious to feel my way through the discomfort and liberation that lies in the pulling apart of these structures of containment––both within and without," she added.

For Prasanna Bisht, the film will mark her first leading role in a feature film. She will also be seen in the soon-to-be-released Voot Select web series "Candy" and "Dedh Bigha Zameen", starring Pratik Gandhi.

Saikia's last work, the short 'The Black Cat', starring Tom Alter and Shernaz Patel, received nominations at the 2018 Critics' Choice Short Film Awards presented by the Film Critics Guild of India.

He made his foray into professional filmmaking by producing the critically acclaimed independent feature film "Kaafiron Ki Namaaz". Saikia's directorial short film debut was "Awakenings" in 2015.