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A quick movie by SRFTI college students is ready for Cannes 2025 choice.
Titled “A Doll Made Up of Clay,” it contains a Nigerian footballer.
The movie was directed by Ethiopian scholar Kokob Gebrehweria Tesfay.
New Delhi:
A quick movie, made by college students of Kolkata’s Satyajit Ray Film & Tv Institute (SRFTI), is making waves internationally – it’s headed to the 78th Pageant de Cannes 2025.
The movie, titled A Doll Made Up of Clay, has been chosen for the celebrated La Cinef part, which showcases works by movie college college students from world wide.
A Doll Made Up of Clay contains a 23-year-old Nigerian footballer, Ahmed, who initially got here to play seven-a-side video games within the metropolis – and someway ended up in entrance of the digital camera as an actor.

The film has been written and directed by Kokob Gebrehweria Tesfay, an Ethiopian scholar at SRFTI and produced by Sahil Manoj Ingle.
Govt Producer Uma Kumari mentioned, “Coming from Rewari, a small city in Haryana, and now getting the chance to symbolize India on a world platform like Cannes seems like a dream. As a feminine Govt Producer, it is a proud second — not only for me, however for each younger dreamers from locations the place cinema is not typically seen as a profession. Carrying the spirit of Haryana, and India with me, I am excited to step onto the world stage and present that no dream is just too far whenever you consider in it.”
A Doll Made Up of Clay was made below the institute’s zero-budget programme.
“SRFTI gives us with the taking pictures location and the studios. I needed to mobilise assets from inside or exterior the institute. That’s the actual problem that we needed to be taught. It’s a enormous honour that the movie made on this method will likely be screened at Cannes,” shared producer Sahil Manoj Ingle, as quoted by the Occasions Of India.
Kokob, who hails from Zalmbessa in Ethiopia’s Tigray area, studied theatrical arts at Addis Ababa College earlier than coming to India on a scholarship from the Indian Council of Cultural Analysis. He enrolled in SRFTI’s route and screenplay writing course and introduced his documentary expertise to this fictional undertaking.
“I made a documentary on African footballers in Kolkata. As an African filmmaker, this story could be very near my coronary heart. The movie is impressed by the real-life experiences of those younger males—a narrative of hope, id, transformation, and survival. I had the privilege of being mentored by Putul Mahmood, Mehdi Jaan, and Siladitya Sanyal all through this undertaking,” he mentioned.
The lead function is performed by Ahmed, a non-professional actor from the Yoruba ethnic group in Nigeria.
“Many African gamers come to Kolkata to play the seven-side or five-side video games. We earn per match and that’s what brings us right here. I acted in main college performs however by no means confronted the digital camera earlier than. When requested to behave, I simply performed myself in entrance of the digital camera,” Ahmed shared.
A Doll Made Up of Clay has a mixture of Yoruba and Bengali languages and dives deep into the lifetime of a younger Nigerian participant who sells his father’s land to chase a soccer dream in India — solely to have that dream crushed by a severe harm. Heartbroken and misplaced, he turns to his roots and ancestral rituals to heal and rediscover himself.
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