Indian animation director woos Toronto festival audience

Toronto, Sep 18: It takes only two movies at the ongoing 42nd Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to witness India's famed animation prowess on the global stage. At least two major films at the Toronto festival have the stamp of India's leadership in animation. Both the films - 'Black Kite' and 'Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! - have the same animation director, who was born in Kolkata. Kunal Sen, who divides his time between India and Canada, says it was a lot of luck to have worked in two films that are part of the Toronto festival this year. "They are both different films. One is a documentary about the food industry and the other is about the Taliban in Afghanistan," says Sen. 'Black Kite', a feature film directed by Afghan-Canadian Tarique Qayumi, tells the relationship between a father and son in the backdrop of the swift political changes happening in Afghanistan. 'Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!', directed by American filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, explores the politics of the food industry again, 13 years after he made his first film, 'Super Size Me'. "'Black Kite' is an intense film about the Taliban's effect on Afghanistan," says Sen, who studied at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore before shifting to Canada to learn animation. "It is a serious film and the animation was not going to be about character," he adds. Sen was asked to animate a kite, to portray the "feeling of freedom". 'Black Kite' shows a father and son finding solace in flying kite as their country goes through troubling times under the Taliban. "The animation in 'Black Kite' is liberating," says Sen. For 'Super Size Me 2', Sen was given a different kind of brief. "The director told me to show the complicated food industry in a simple way," says Sen, who created an animated chicken that goes through different adventures. Sen, who studied animation in Vancouver, Canada, has set up his own animation production house, Good Bad Habits, which has collaborated in ten films so far. Sen is also joined by his wife Tisha Deb Pillai, an animator, who is currently directing animation for an American documentary in production, called 'Cairo to the Cloud'. UNI