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Walking backwards

Not generic ‘The film is about memories, which are images of reality in hindsight'; Roman Paul

T he Golden Globe winning Waltz With Bashir will be coming to a cinema near you thanks to UTV World Movies.

“The Indian audience are opening to world cinema,” says producer Roman Paul on phone. Roman, who was in Mumbai for the premier, lauds UTV World Movies for “bringing international art house cinema to a formerly close market like India.” Waltz With Bashir is an animated documentary based of writer-director Ari Folman's memories of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Though both genres — animation and documentaries are not big favourites of the Indian audience, Roman is convinced the “Waltz” will find an audience in the country.

“There is always a first time. This is a unique film and as far international cinema goes, the audience is always looking for something new, something not generic, which anyway comes out of Hollywood. No one wants the same kind of food all the time. As the levels of education go up, people are curious about other countries and cultures which one can learn of through cinema. International cinema deals with universal themes in a country-specific way.”

Talking about the choice of genre, Roman comments, “The film is about memories, which are images of reality in hindsight, so animation was the perfect for ‘Waltz'. Also it was not physically possible to shoot in many of the places as they had changed greatly.” Roman's profile reveals him as head of international feature film acquisitions with Senator Filmverleih GmbH in Berlin and Los Angeles between 1999 and 2002.

Roman is looking forward to working with Indian directors.

“It would be the utmost pleasure to work with Indian filmmakers. I have watched the great Indian filmmakers' works as part of my film studies. However, I would never forget the first Bollywood film I watched, ‘Lagaan.' I absolutely loved it.”

Waltz With Bashir airs on UTV World Movies on November 29 at 8.30 p.m.

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