'Huge paucity of sufficient content for kids'

There is a scarcity of sufficient content for children in the feature film space in India, says Nina Lath Gupta, managing director of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) India.

"For a country where a very substantial percentage of our population are children, we have a huge paucity of sufficient content for kids in the feature film space.

"Given NFDC's focus on initiating development work in areas where there is a perceived vacuum, it was only natural for the institution to take up the issue of developing production worthy content for children's films," Gupta said in a statement.

NFDC has announced six projects selected for its first Children's Screenwriter's Lab, one of them being Soumitra Ranade's Kabuliwala based on the famous book by Rabindranath Tagore.

Other final scripts are "A Lottery Ticket" by Sagarika Banik, "The Adventures of Kaka and Kaki" by Shreyas Govindarajan Thathachari, "The Girl with the Gents Bicycle" by Ravi S. Alok, "The Mahout" by Sharmila Sankar and "The Pink Walls of My School" by Girish Jotwani.

With the aim to cultivate original Indian stories specifically for children and adolescents, the Children's Screenwriters' Lab will provide participants the opportunity to explore their stories through one-on-one and group sessions with international mentors.

The participants will also get a chance to pitch their scripts to producers and investors in a specially designed session during Film Bazaar 2015, the annual international film market, held alongside the International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

Mieke de Jong, Rasmus Horskjær and Anna Tamara Bos, known internationally for their extensive work in children's films, will mentor the projects.