Manoj Vajpayee’s ‘The Fable’ at the Berlinale 2024 (Watch trailer)

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.

‘The Fable’ is screening at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival (15-25 Feb., 2024) being part of this year’s Encounters programme which features 15 films. A three-member jury chooses the winners for Best Film, Best Director and the Special Jury Award: Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Denis Côté (Canada) and Tizza Covi (Italy).

Crew

Director, Screenplay, Music  Raam Reddy (Thithi 2024); Cinematography Sunil Borkar; Editing Raam Reddy & Siddarth Kapoor; Producers Pratap Reddy & Sunmin Park…

Actors Manoj Vajpayee (Dev), Priyanka Bose (Nandini), Deepak Dobriyal (Mohan), Tillotama Shome (Radha), Hiral Sidhu (Vanya), Awan Pookot (Juju), Viking (Colonel Bopanna),

Ravi Bisht (Keshav)…

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