The Fable

Spring 1989. High up in the Indian Himalayas, where even the birds fly low to avoid getting lost in the clouds, the soft-spoken Dev owns a sprawling estate of several orchards and lives in a colonial-style house with his family. He spends a lot of his time building human-sized wings which he puts on to take a quick morning flight over his land. One day, while walking through the estate, he discovers a single burnt apple tree. A few days later, more trees are burnt. Dev and his manager monitor the workers on the plantations and this leads to unrest. A group of nomads comes under suspicion and a corrupt police officer gets involved, while loyal men camp out in the orchards to keep a vigilant watch at night. Despite all these measures, a massive fire breaks out a week later and engulfs an entire mountainside of trees. In his search for the culprit, Dev resorts to armed violence. The slow burning of the orchards forces him to face the truth about himself and his family.
by Raam Reddy
with Manoj Bajpayee, Priyanka Bose, Deepak Dobriyal, Tillotama Shome, Hiral Sidhu, Awan Pookot, Viking, Ravi Bisht
India / USA 2024 Hindi, English 119’ Colour World premiere

With

  • Manoj Bajpayee (Dev)
  • Priyanka Bose (Nandini)
  • Deepak Dobriyal (Mohan)
  • Tillotama Shome (Radha)
  • Hiral Sidhu (Vanya)
  • Awan Pookot (Juju)
  • Viking (Colonel Bopanna)
  • Ravi Bisht (Keshav)

Crew

Director Raam Reddy
Screenplay Raam Reddy
Cinematography Sunil Borkar
Editing Raam Reddy, Siddharth Kapoor
Music Raam Reddy
Sound Design Nithin Lukose
Sound Arun Kumar
Production Design Juhi Agarwal
Costumes Sachin Lovalekar
Make-Up Abhijeet Aamane
Casting Tess Joseph, Gurpal Singh
Animation Varun Ramanna
Producers Pratap Reddy, Sunmin Park
Executive Producer J. Ethan Park
Co-Producer Ganesh Shetty
Associate Producer Juhi Agarwal

Produced by

Prspctvs Productions

Raam Reddy

The writer and director was born in 1989 and studied directing at the Prague Film School. In 2009, he published the novel “It’s Raining in Maya”. His debut feature film Thithi won two Golden Leopards at the 68th Locarno Film Festival as well as several other international awards. The film screened as part of the New Directors/New Films programme at MoMA in New York, ran successfully for over three months in Indian cinemas and had its global distribution rights purchased by Netflix. The Fable is his second feature film.

Filmography

2011 Ika (Feather); short film 2016 Thithi 2024 The Fable

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2024