Adieu Godard trailer: Amartya Bhattacharyya pays tribute to Jean-Luc Godard in simple black and white frames

After being lauded in several film festivals, Amartya Bhattacharyya’s Adieu Godard is all set to release in cinemas on September 2. The film that received the Best Film Award in Indian Languages competition at the 26th Kolkata International Film Festival is also Amratya’s tribute to French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. 

The trailer shows an old man, Ananda, who plans to host a Godard film festival in his small village. Ananda is a pornography addict. One day, he accidentally comes across Godard’s film mistakenly rented as pornography. Though his friends were disgusted, Ananda gets attracted to Godard’s film and gradually develops an obsession. Now he wants a festival of Godard’s films because he believes if people watch his films, they will become thinkers and that will change the nature of Odia films. The trailer is a collage of scenes showing the film festival arrangements. At one point, Godard films are touted as ‘foreign films’ with ‘hero, heroine and villains’ being ‘white-skinned’ and ‘skimpily dressed’. However, Ananda seems to chase his obsession with meeting Godard. 

In an earlier interview, Amartya said that his film is simple and enjoyable. “Yet it has a lot of impact in terms of how the cross-cultural aspects of our society are brought to light. Though I’ve made films both in Bengali and Odia, I chose to make this film in Odia and shot this in Odisha because of the social contrast. Rural Odisha is, by-and-large, more conservative, and old men watching pornography secretly in rural Odisha creates that context in which the film is set. Also, the indigenous culture in Odisha villages makes the French new wave auteur Jean Luc Godard an alien subject to the villagers. That is the trigger of all humour. I’m sure this film will touch every viewer irrespective of their language, age and taste. It’s a very entertaining film,” he said.