As a film production company, Pontas is currently developing and financing the feature film projectTraces of Sandalwood, to be directed by Maria Ripoll. Shooting is planned for 2013 with Nandita Das, Cristina Brondo and Ajay Jethi as the leading cast.
Last March, Maria Ripoll, Jep Brengaret as cameraman and Anna Soler-Pont as producer travelled to Mumbai to shoot some images for a 3-minute teaser around the city with Nandita Das. As well as images around locations in Barcelona with Cristina Brondo and Ajay Jethi. Finding distributors is now crucial and several international sales agencies have already shown interest before the Cannes Film Market 2012, where the teaser will be shown.
Among others, also attached to the project are Hélène Louvart as director of photography, Luci Lenox as casting director and Coral Cruz as script editor.Traces of Sandalwood is based in the novel with the same title by Asha Miró and Anna Soler-Pont, with a screenplay (written by Anna Soler-Pont) that only adapts part of the book. In the film, the story spans from the 1980s to today and is set in Mumbai and Barcelona, interweaving the stories of Muna and Sita, two Indian orphan sisters with very different fates. Muna is a thirteen years old orphan Indian girl who works as a domestic servant of a rich family in Mumbai. Not a single day goes by without her thinking of her younger sister, Sita, from whom she was forced to separate, and dreaming about finding her. Muna will end up becoming a Bollywood star and marrying the oldest son of the family where she worked. As a famous actress and happy adult, she will finally meet her sister again in Barcelona. But Sita’s adoptive parents have erased all her past tracks. She is now called Paula and works in the Center of Regenerative Medicine as a biologist doing stem cells’ research. Paula will have to do a long journey to discover who she really is with the help of a handsome Indian immigrant selling Bollywood films in a dvd store in downtown Barcelona.Muna and Sita/Paula will converge more than thirty years later, having crossed cultures and borders, and beyond a common past and a future yet to come.
For more information: anna@pontas-agency.com