Hemwant Tiwari’s groundbreaking feature film Lomad is filmed entirely in one-shot with no cuts, making it the world’s first black and white one-shot feature.
Coming in at one hour and 37 minutes this would already be quite a feat, but Tiwari exceeds expectations adding intrigue and drama at every turn.
What starts out as a story of a former couple now reuiniting after ten years through social
media, builds with intensity - moment by moment and scene by scene through the situations the characters begin to face. Tiwari stars and dazzles delivering a complicated multi-layered
performance that grounds us on his remarkable journey in the film. A journey which involves
crime, romance, love, betrayal and survival. Lomad consists of a great ensemble cast that includes Auroshikha Dey, Tirrtha Murbaadkar and Parmal Aloke. In this film, the actors not only have to reach their extreme emotional level in the same take but also bring a flawless technical performance involving perfect timing, stunts, props and choreography with cinematographer, Joy Supratim. This is all done excellently and the acting is performed brilliantly throughout the film. The distinct movements of the camera as it follows the characters compounds the heaviness we feel as the story unfolds. The location is
entirely outside and one can imagine the technical and physical difficulty Supratim had to
encounter while filming. The complication in the planning and making of the movie is one in which the Seattle Film Festival honored by awarding Tiwari the Grand Jury Prize for Best Achievement in Filmmaking (one of 11 awards the film has collected at film festivals so far). This movie takes us on a full emotional trip while following the fresh restrictions put upon itself by filming it in one continuous shot. By the end of the film we have seen Tiwari lay everything out on the line - giving his character the rawness and complexity needed to make the film’s story memorable. A second viewing of Lomad is even more mesmerizing as the little details in Tiwari’s performance come out only after knowing the final mind-blowing ending.
Lomad, also known to US Film Festivals as The Fox, is a multilingual film using both English and Hindi.
