NFDC announces six projects for Children's Screenwriter's Lab

Mumbai: National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) India has announced six projects selected for its first ever Children's Screenwriters' Lab introduced this year.

The six selected scripts are "Kabuliwala" by Soumitra Ranade, "A Lottery Ticket" by Sagarika Banik, "The Adventures of Kaka and Kaki" by Shreyas Govindarajan Thathachari, Ravi S Alok's "The Girl with the Gents Bicycle", Sharmila Sankar's "The Mahout" and "The Pink Walls of My School" by Girish Jotwani.

The projects will be mentored by Mieke de Jong, Rasmus Horskjr and Anna Tamara Bos, known internationally for their extensive work in children's films.

"For a country where a very substantial percentage of our population are children, we have a huge paucity of sufficient content for kids in the feature film space.

"Given NFDC's focus on initiating development work in areas where there is a perceived vacuum, it was only natural for the institution to take up the issue of developing production worthy content for children's films," Nina Lath Gupta, managing director of NFDC India, said in a statement.

The Children's Screenwriters' Lab will provide participants the opportunity to explore their stories through one-on-one and group sessions with international mentors.
The participants will also get a chance to pitch their scripts to producers and investors in a specially designed session during Film Bazaar 2015.

While, "Piku" writer Juhi?Chaturvedi, "Dum Laga Ke Haisha" director Sharat Kataria and Habib Faisal will mentor the six finalists of NFDC India Romance Screenwriters' Lab 2015.

The selected scripts are "Chitrangada: Body, Speech and Mind" by?Abhyuday Khaitan, "Fly Me to the Moon" by?Vivek Raju, "Matsyagandha" by?Pooja Gupta, Samimitra Das' "Tatevik", "The List" by Varun Oberoi and "You've Been Pinged" by Smita Kapoor.