Manjari may be making her Bollywood debut with this film, but she is not new to the world of cinema. The LA-based filmmaker has directed three short films and won several awards nationally and internationally over a span of 12 years.
Impressively, she has worked with renowned filmmakers like Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk and The Dark Knight Rises, Patty Jenkins on Wonder Woman and Vishal Bhardwaj on Saat Khoon Maaf, besides other projects like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Wake Up Sid and Gandhi of the Month. However, she chose to come back home and make a film based on women empowerment.
Desert Dolphin is a story about a 16-year-old Prerna, a village girl who finds the courage to skate against all odds when her path crosses that of Jessica, 34, a graphic artist from Los Angeles who’s looking for deeper joy in life. The story is set in a remote village in Rajasthan. For the film, the makers have made India’s largest skatepark, spread across 14,500 square feet with 100 ramps, in the Khempur village near Udaipur with the help of premiere skatepark specialists and a skateboard coaching group.
Manjari, who was exposed to the skateboarding culture during her stay in LA, says that it was a video of the sport transforming lives in a small Madhya Pradesh village that grabbed her attention. Upon further research and meeting the skaters there, she realised the concept was inspired by a skating group in Afghanistan. This led Manjiri to dig deeper and she began her research in September 2016, immersing herself in the correlation between skating and social change.
Vinati, who is producing the film, shares that the idea was to involve as many real skateboarders as possible in their project. During auditions, they reached out to the skateboarding communities in India. Vinati even travelled to Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Mumbai and villages in Rajasthan spending a few days work shopping with over 3000 kids all over.
It will be interesting to see what these two sisters have in store for us, reports ANI.
