By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: National award-winning Khasi film Onaatah: Of The Earth, directed by Pradip Kurbah, is being adapted in Marathi and is set to release on October 11.
The Marathi adaptation, Mann Udhan Vaara, is being directed by Sanjay Memane and produced by Bollywood actor and filmmaker Satish Kaushik. Kurbah said Kaushik approached him with the proposal to remake Onaatah in Marathi immediately after the film won the National award in 2016. Kaushik was a member of the awards jury that year. Onaatah is the second film from the North East to be remade in another language, the first being the Assamese film Chameli Memsaab that was remade in Bengali and Hindi.“It is a new door that has opened up. Maybe filmmakers here should now think about the content so that it has a pan-India impact. Onaatah’s subject is such. The way we have treated the issue is unpretentious, there was no melodrama,” Kurbah told The Shillong Times when asked why Onaatah caught the attention of a filmmaker from a different state and culture.
Kurbah, whose next film Iewduh is due for release this year, stressed the need for a strong content so that more films from the region make an impact on the audience in the mainland. “There is another way of bridging the gap with mainland India,” he said.