No pain, all gain for India's first TIFF Midnight Madness title

Writer-director Vasan Bala's sophomore vehicle "Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota" (The Man Who Feels No Pain) made history here at the stroke of midnight on Friday, becoming the first-ever Indian film to play in the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness, a section devoted to genre and shock cinema.

"I grew up watching films with audiences like you," the Mumbai filmmaker told the packed auditorium before the screening at the Ryerson University auditorium here.

"Having my film screen here for such an audience is a dream come true." Vasan Bala was on the stage with his two leads, Abhimanyu Dassani and Radhika Madan, both Bollywood newcomers.

Setting the stage for the screening, the ebullient TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky said: "Ever since I began programming for the section, I had an important goal: I had to include a genre film from India."
"Every now and then a conversation begins around the possibility of the film being released but nothing has happened so far. I do not know why."