Goldfish is what I have been waiting for, says Deepti Naval

Pushan Kripalani’s Goldfish, starring Deepti Naval and Kalki Koechlin, is due to be premiered at the 27th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), being held from 5 - 14 October.

The first film from Amit Saxena’s Splendid Films, the English-language feature is being screened in the A Window on Asian Cinema section. It is one of five Indian films selected in that section.  

Naval and Koechlin play mother and daughter in the film, while Rajit Kapur, Gordon and Bharti Patel are also featured in the film. Warnecke co-starred in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) opposite Daniel Day-Lewis.  

Kripalani’s film deals with memory and identity. Koechlin plays Anamika, the child of a mixed marriage, who comes back home to take care of her estranged mother Sadhana (Naval) after her diagnosis of dementia. While she returns to a neighbourhood she barely remembers, her relationship with her mother is strained even more with her memory loss.  

Set in London, England, Goldfish is executive produced by Pooja Chauhan. A UK production, the film had its market screening at Marché du Film at the Cannes Film Festival this year and was part of the First Cut Plus lab, in association with Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

In a statement, Naval shared, “When I first heard the story of the film in three lines, I immediately connected with the film. Something inside me said, this is for me, this is what I have been waiting for. Maybe because I saw my mother go through Alzheimer’s and dementia. I am really excited about the selection of the film at BIFF and I am sure the audiences will take the story of Sadhana and Anamika with them in their hearts.”

Koechlin said, “The film’s cast included Indians from all over the world and all these actors had their own accents, which is something we’ve never seen in a film – the diversity of Indian accents and therefore of the people of India. So I am both excited and humbled that Goldfish will premiere at Busan, a festival that has highlighted so many iconic films and hosted amazing talent through the last quarter of a century.”

Delighted upon the film’s selection for BIFF, Kripalani explained that Goldfish explores the ideas of identity through two women. “One is unsure of who she is because she lives between two cultures, neither completely her own, and the other, stuck in a land not her own, now because of her disease, with her identity ephemeral,” he stated. “It seeks to address the ideas of duty, love and painful history. We are delighted and honoured to be part of the Busan International Film Festival. We hope people relate to the themes explored and we look forward to presenting our film.”

Producer Saxena shared, “This is a great validation of the team and the hard work everyone has put in. This has been a remarkable and rewarding journey.”

Executive producer Pooja Chauhan added, “Goldfish is about belonging. It’s about being able to call a place your own. It’s about good things and bad things, and everything in the middle, where life is lived. Where tragedies are small and epic, all at once. And the joys seem both mundane and transcendent.”

She continued, “It should speak to people around the world and we are really excited that Busan is providing our film the platform to find its place and reach its audiences.”