''Adda'' (English: Gossip) is the first feature film by filmmaker Devayush Chowdhary. It has been produced by Maxim Pictures and Reeldrama Productions and released in India on 13 September 2019.

Plot

''Adda'' is a modern-day

fable Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mor ...

of four interconnected tales of love, friendship,

karma Karma (; sa, कर्म}, ; pi, kamma, italic=yes) in Sanskrit means an action, work, or deed, and its effect or consequences. In Indian religions, the term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively ...

, and catharsis. The film is about two naughty angels, Black and White, who come down to

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

and spy in on the lives of four jobless friends, an aging freedom fighter, a struggling actress, and a self-righteous journalist in order to decide humanity's fate and in the process become witnesses to our bumbling attempts at happiness.

Cast

Soumitra Chatterjee Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; 16 June 193515 November 2020) was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of ...

as Dhritimaan Panja, an aging college professor. *

Sabyasachi Chakraborty Sabyasachi Chakrabarty is an Indian actor of theatre, films and television. He is best known for portraying iconic Bengali detective characters, Feluda, and Kakababu. Personal life His parents, Jagadish Chandra Chakrabarty and Monica Chakrabart ...

as White, the angel of light. * Dipangshu Acharya as Black, the angel of darkness. * Saayoni Ghosh as Tanya, a struggling actress. *

Indrasish Roy Indrasish Roy is an Indian film and television actor. He played the role of Tintin in serial ''Gaaner Opare''. Later he played the lead role of Chandrakiran Chowdhury, the male protagonist of serial ''Adwitiya''. He debuted in films with Kaushik ...

as Rudro, a successful banker. * Saurav Das as Satyajit, an NRI filmmaker. * Ritwika Pal * Deboprosad Haldar * Prantik Banerjee * Jit Das * Swarnab Banerjee * Anamika Chakraborty * Dipanwita Nath * Sanghasree Sinha * Nilankur Mukkhopadhyay

Reception

''Adda'' opened to generally positive reviews but a tepid response at the

box office A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is f ...

owing to a lack of big commercial stars and huge publicity. However, the film soon caught on through word of mouth. Renowned film critic Shoma Chatterji of

The Statesman (India) ''The Statesman'' is an Indian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper founded in 1875 and published simultaneously in Kolkata, New Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar. It incorporates and is directly descended from ''The Friend of India'', fou ...

called the film "An accomplished debut". The film drew both appreciation and criticism for its stylistic approach which included shaky camera movements, long monologues, and incomplete narrative threads which are all uncommon in Bengali Cinema.

The Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the List of newspapers in India by circulation, t ...

said it was "not a bad film" and gave it 2.5 stars

Production

The film was originally conceived as a found footage film while the director was still a student at NYU's

Tisch School of the Arts The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, Tisch is a training ground for artists, scholars of the a ...

. The director Devayush Chowdhary originally conceived the film in 2011 and it took him seven years to write the screenplay. In an interview, he mentioned that because the titular characters Black and White speak in a rhyming tongue of their own, writing rhymes in

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the ...

was the toughest part for him. By his own admission, the film is inspired by several

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

and

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...

indie films An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, in ...

, key amongst them

Jim Jarmusch James Robert Jarmusch (; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films including '' Stranger Than Paradise'' (1984), ''Down by Law'' (19 ...

Coffee and Cigarettes ''Coffee and Cigarettes'' is the title of three short films and a 2003 feature-length anthology film by independent film director Jim Jarmusch. The feature film consists of 11 short stories which share coffee and cigarettes as a common thread ...

and

Kiran Rao Kiran Rao (born 7 November 1973) is an Indian film producer, screenwriter, and director who works in Hindi cinema. In 2016, Rao co-founded Paani Foundation, a non-profit organisation working towards the mission of fighting drought in Maharashtr ...

's Dhobi Ghat.

References

{{Reflist 2019 films Indian detective films Bengali-language Indian films