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Film Archive

The Lunchbox

Horizons 2013 / Dabba / India, France, Germany 2013

Are you fed up with depressing social dramas? Then don’t miss a funny, elegant, and optimistic romance set in contemporary Mumbai. This properly "spiced” story of lost lunchboxes that engineer a love affair between attractive Ila and aging Saajan might have come from the well-greased typewriters of Hollywood’s classic era.

The Lunchbox The Lunchbox

Synopsis

Fed up with depressing social dramas? Then don’t miss this funny, elegant and optimistic romance set in contemporary Mumbai. One of the city’s unusual phenomena is the 5,000-member community of Dabbawallahs, who have filled Mumbai’s streets for some 120 years. Every morning, this courier service delivers lunchboxes from housewives’ kitchens to their husbands’ offices, and then brings the empty boxes back in the evening. This incredibly sophisticated delivery system was even studied by a team from Harvard University, which found that only one in four million lunchboxes is delivered to the wrong person. This talented Indian filmmaker’s feature debut tells the story of this lunchbox. "Spiced” with just the right ingredients, this story of a wayward lunch that brings together the attractive but neglected wife Ila with the sad, retirement-ready Saajan could just as well have been written by a screenwriter from the golden age of Hollywood.

About the film

104 min / Color, DCP

Director Ritesh Batra / Screenplay Ritesh Batra / Dir. of Photography Michael Simmonds, John Lyons / Music Max Richter / Editor John Lyons / Producer Guneet Monga, Anurag Kashyap, Arun Rangachari / Production Sikhya Entertainment, Dar Motion Pictures / Cast Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui / Contact The Match Factory, Aerofilms / Distributor Aerofilms

About the director

Ritesh Batra

Ritesh Batra (b. 1978, Mumbai, India) is a director and screenwriter who divides his private and professional life between Mumbai and New York. In 2009, his project The Story of Ram was selected for the Sundance Institute’s screenwriting and directing workshop. He studied film at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts until 2010, and has made numerous short films that have been shown at festivals throughout the world. His feature-film debut was selected for Critics’ Week at this year’s festival in Cannes.

Contacts

The Match Factory
Domstrasse 60, 50668, Cologne
Germany
Phone: +49 221 539 7090
E-mail: [email protected]

Aerofilms
Milady Horákové 383/79, 170 00, Praha 7
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 224 947 566
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Ivo Andrle
Distributor

Brigitte Suárez
Sales Agent

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