The Song of Scorpions to Open IFFSA 2018

Toronto, April 12  –  The Song of Scorpions, which premiered at the Piazza Grande, Locarno Film Festival, and has travelled to some of the most prestigious film festivals in Europe, the Middle-East, Asia & Latin America will have its North American premiere at IFFSA 2018 as the opening film.

Director, writer Anup Singh has again cast Qissa star, Rajasthan-born Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi, The Lunchbox), as the male lead. France-based Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (About Elly, Paterson) plays the determined female protagonist and the legendary Waheeda Rehman is cast in a role that Singh describes as “the soul of the film.”

Nooran, (Golshifteh Farahani)  is learning the ancient art of healing from her grandmother, a scorpion-singer. Aadam (Irrfan Khan), a camel trader, falls in love when he hears her sing. But before long, Nooran is poisoned by a treachery and must undertake a journey to avenge herself and find her song.

“Anup Singh is no stranger to our festival and we are thrilled to have The Song of Scorpions as our opening film,” Says Sunny Gill President of IFFSA. “The Song of Scorpions follows the international success of his first two films, The Name of a River and Qissa. His distinctive cinematic language, where landscape and human figures find constantly new and vital relations with each other, has been called one of the most poetic and inspirational of contemporary world cinema. His films tenderly touch upon the fundamental motives behind human behaviour: love, vengeance and the sense of wonder. This mesmerizing and poetic film has won accolades around the world and will now come to North America for the first time.”

“The original music for the film is scored by Beatrice Thiriet, whose “conjuring with tones delicately, relentlessly summons the phantoms of sensations & thoughts that only cinema can give residence to,” says Anup Singh, writer/ director. The songs are written and composed by Madan Gopal Singh, whose “words and rhythms are reveries, ceaselessly celebrating clear-sighted revelations about our implacable mystery. The Songs are sung by Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy, whose breath & voice sensuously lifts us into the trance where the total freedom of the mind & body seems a veritable possibility.”