Filmmaker Ashish Pant’s debut feature follows the story of Shirish and Geeta, an upper middle class couple in Lucknow who run over a rickshaw driver with their car, who get caught up with dramatically opposing reactions to the tragedy. Shirish attempts to move on, harnessing the invisible protections afforded to him by class structure, and hiding behind the visible walls and locked gates of his home. In parallel, Geeta’s guilt drives her to surreptitiously employ Manoj, the victim’s younger brother, intertwining two lives otherwise separated by class and power. The small collision quickly turns into a dramatic suspense, spurred by greed, betrayal, and guilt, the nocuous effects of grave inequality threatening to unwind the very fabric of each of their lives.

THE KNOT (ULJHAN) delivers a suspenseful narrative of a literal collision between disparate lives, buoyed by strong lead performances that hold the complexity of life in quiet movements, a well-paced escalation of betrayal, and highly expressive cinematography that at once invites us to observe the story from afar, and immerses us in the choices each character makes. Pant challenges us to reflect on the dangers of an entrenched class divide, earning him a spot as one of the most compelling new filmmakers this year. 

DIRECTOR

Ashish Pant is a filmmaker from Lucknow, a mid-size city in North India. He is based in New York where he teaches film at the College of Mount Saint Vincent and HB Studio. THE KNOT (ULJHAN) is his debut feature film that he also wrote.