Screening on March 15th.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: The documentary film Lucky Express: India’s Forgotten Train Kids will have its New York City film festival premiere at the Rated SR Film Festival on Saturday, March 15.
The film, directed by Anna Fischer, chronicles the plight of railway children in India. These are kids who grow up without families and often have to survive on their own wits and guile, travelling among train platforms across the country to find food, work, and shelter. The word “Lucky” in the film’s title is the name of a former platform child who assisted Fischer in the making of the film, and is now a burgeoning documentarian in his own right.
“Vijay “Lucky” Bahadhur had been on his own since age five, first working as a “chai wallah,” (tea boy) before moving up to becoming a pickpocket,” says a press release put out by the film’s production team. “Lucky’s credibility granted Fisher and producer Thomas Simon entrée with the platform kids at multiple stops along their 5,336 km / 3315 mile journey which took 88 hours on India Railway.”
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Fischer won the Best Director prize at the ITN Film Festival, and the film won Best Documentary at the Marina Del Rey Film Festival. Now, it will be making its debut in New York City, one of the havens for creative and independent filmmaking that draws the best and brightest from around the world.
The Rated SR (Socially Relevant) Film Festival “shines the spotlight on filmmakers who tell compelling, socially relevant narratives across a broad range of social issues without resorting to gratuitous violence and violent forms of movie-making.” It was founded by actor/filmmaker/curator Nora Armani, and works to promote positive social change through cinema.
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