Dominic Sangma’s “Rapture” (“Rimdogittanga”), which was a nominee at the recently concluded Asian Film Awards, has been snapped up for French distribution by Capricci, as revealed at Hong Kong rights market FilMart.
The film revolves around a 10-year-old boy who suffers from night blindness and for whom every night is terrifying when his village is gripped by the fear of child kidnappers. The film debuted at Locarno in 2023 and won prizes at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Mumbai Film Festival. “Rapture” also won the special jury award at the Hainan Island International Film Festival in China and will screen at the upcoming Beijing International Film Festival.
The film is a rare India-China co-production. One of the lead producers is China’s Xu Jianshang, who met Sangma at a students’ film festival in 2014 and produced his “Ma’ama,” which won an award at the Shanghai Film Festival. “Rapture” was developed when Xu was attending the Busan Asian Film School in 2019. Xu introduced the project to Sun Li of China’s Joicy Studio, who boarded the project. The film’s India producer, Anu Rangachar, brought in several other producers including Harsh Agarwal of Uncombed Buddha, Aditya Grover and Stephen Zacharias. Eva Gunme R. Marak, a patron for many artists in the region, also boarded the project.
“Rapture” was invited to India’s Film Bazaar, won a grant for script development from the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund, participated in Boost NL and was selected for La Fabrique Cinema at Cannes. Xu took part in Talents Tokyo and Sangma at Berlinale Talents. Funding also came in from Vision Sud Est and the Doha Film Institute.
Capricci is a French independent arthouse production, distribution and sales company. The shingle has repped fiolms from directors such as Abel Ferrara, Albert Serra, Hong Sangsoo, Philippe Garrel, Bi Gan, Jean-Charles Hue and Wang Bing.
The Garo-language “Rapture” originated from a childhood memory of Sangma, who hails from Meghalaya in northeastern India, and the film is set there.
“Capricci is delighted to be working on the French release of ‘Rapture.’ With this film, we discovered a region of India with which we were unfamiliar, but also a filmmaker of extremely promising talent,” a Capricci spokesperson told Variety. “We were struck by the film’s formal beauty, as well as by Dominic Sangma’s extremely lucid view of his childhood memories and his community. We’re proud to bring his art to French cinephiles.”
Sangma told Variety: “Capricci are very special distributors for arthouse films, they distributed some of my favorite films of recent time, they’re perfect for ‘Rapture.’ It gives me immense pleasure that ‘Rapture’ will be theatrically released in France. ‘Rapture’ is a small film from Meghalaya and to be released theatrically in France means a proud moment for my entire Garo community and it is making history for my state, no other film from Meghalaya has released before in France. I am super excited and such moments are to cherish.”
— Variety (EXCLUSIVE)