01/12/2008

“Mumbai is essentially a very calm city, but like all of India it is full of extremes and unexpected and cruel things like this happen. It was a shock seeing places where we shot, like Victoria Station, under attack by terrorists. But Mumbai will know how to rise up from this," says Danny Boyle.

The British director was in Rome to present Slumdog Millionaire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danny Boyle
film profile] just as the film’s location is under siege. His latest work, on a young man born and raised in slums of the city formerly known as Bombay, who gets on the TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire to achieve his dream of love, vividly depicts the skyline and underlying contradictions of this city with a population of 20 million that is currently very much in the news.

Winner of the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and on November 30 Best Independent Film at the BIFA Awards in London, Slumdog is continuing its successful run in the US, where it was released on November 12 (with the second best per screen average of €28,000). Many believe it is a strong Oscar nominee in more than one category.

Lucky Red will release the film in Italy on December 5 on 120 screens, ahead of its releases in the UK (January 9, 2009), France (January 16) and India (January 23).

At times exhilarating, at times moving, and bursting with energy in every frame, the film is an aesthetical explosion that tries to answer the intriguing question of how anyone comes to know the things they know about life and love. Without ever losing its anger over the injustice at its very core.

Boyle – who worked from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) adapted from the bestselling novel by Indian writer Vikas Swarup – admits: "I’m an old punk who thought India was just a place for hippies. Actually, it’s a truly magical place, in which anything can happen. The secret is to let things flow by themselves".

(Translated from Italian)