Documentary on rat killers wins award at Cannes

It’s still a half completed, in production documentary on the lives of Mumbai’s pied pipers — the rat killers. But for Miriam Chandy Menacherry, the story she wants to narrate has worked out to be the best. Menacherry’s documentary, The Rat Race, has won the prestigious MIPDoc co-production challenge at Cannes.  

“The entire journey has been overwhelming,” said Menacherry, 35, director of the production house Filament Pictures. The filmmaker is quick to add that destiny has played a big part in her journey.

Menacherry was probably the last person to submit her documentary’s trailer for the co production challenge, having received the mail on the last day of submissions. “It was a last minute scramble to get the trailer and the required papers. I nearly gave up,” she said.

The co-production challenge is an international pitching competition for creators of documentary and factual programmes. Menacherry’s The Rat Race was one of the six films pitched to a Cannes jury, and the only one from Asia.

The others were hard hitting socio-political stories from Sudan, France, Czech Republic and Texas. “I was really nervous after seeing all the films, but the audience response perked me up. They seemed to take to my film, and reacted very spontaneously,” said Menacherry.

She made her pitch to the jury in five minutes, with a 90 second trailer of her documentary. The trailer touched up on lives of the rat killers; it had footage of them at work during the Ganpati visarjan, and of them counting rats. The star of her pitch was a certain Parsi gentleman, who wanted to become a Bollywood dancer but ended up supervising the rat killers for the last 37 years.

The Rat Race, she said, received a personal endorsement by one of the judges, Nick Fraser, the commissioning editor, Storyville, BBC. “He had a lot of things to say about all the other films, good and bad. When it came to The Rat Race, he said the film is an unusual way of looking at the survival instinct of a developing country,” said Menacherry.

And, being endorsed by the Cannes jury has its own rewards. “There are a lot of independent channels, who have shown interest in being part of the film,” added Menacherry.