'Doob' selected for El Gouna Film Festival

Irrfan Khan starrer No Bed of Roses (Doob; in Bengali), the much talked about film of Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, has been selected for the main competition section of El Gouna Film Festival which is going to run from September 22 to 29 in Egypt, says a press release.

In the competition section of El Gouna, No Bed of Roses will compete with the some of the strongest titles of world cinema this year which includes Berlin film festival’s silver bear winner “The other side of Hope”, Tribeca Film Festival winner “Son Of Sofia”, Locarno film festival’s “First Feature Film” winner and Bosnia’s official entry to the Oscar “Scary Mother”, Best Actor winner in Venice “The Insult”, The Third Murder (Venice International film festival, In competition), Volubilis (Venice Days), and Zama (Venice International film festival, out of competition).

No Bed of Roses is the only South Asian title in the competition this year with another Indian title “Mokkabaz” by Anurag Kashyap playing out of competition, reads the release.

The new El Gouna Film Festival, officially unveiled on the eve of Cannes this year, is founded by brothers Naguib and Sameh Sawirisand being run under the programme direction of respected Arab programmer Intishal Al Timimi.

It has announced to hand out more than $200,000 worth of cash prizes to the winners of its first edition. It becomes one of the biggest film festival prize money pots in the Arab-speaking world, alongside the Dubai International Film Festival.

The new prizes – to be called the El Gouna Stars – will be awarded across three categories: feature narrative, feature documentary and shorts.

In the feature narrative competition, the best film will receive the $50,000 El Gouna Golden Star for a Narrative Film, followed by the $25000 El Gouna Silver Star and $15,000 El Gouna Bronze Star for the runners-up, according to the release.

The film is a joint venture between Jazz Multimedia (Bangladesh) and Eskay movies (India). Starred and co-produced by Irrfan Khan, No Bed of Roses has already garnered rave reviews from top film magazines like Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Screen Daily. It has also bagged Independent Jury Prize at Moscow International Film Festival and was nominated for Gloden Goblet Awards at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

Other than El Gouna, it has also been selected for Asia’s top festival Busan and Canada’s Vancouver International Film Festival. Production sources informed there are some more festival selections coming the film’s way.

Earlier, it was declared that the film would release theatrically in India, Bangladesh, and some other territories on October 27. The film suffered a long delay at the censor due to some controversies.

Besides Irrfan Khan, No Bed of Roses has a set of casts from Bangladesh and India that includes Nusrat Imrose Tisha and Parno Mittra.