‘Burnt Sugar’: Deepa Mehta says her next film is ‘about a woman serial killer’

Acclaimed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose latest documentary I Am Sirat is doing the rounds at various international film festivals across the world, has begun scripting her next film Burnt Sugar.

The film is a silver-screen adaptation of Avni Doshi’s bestselling novel of the same name.

Talking about the film, Mehta told a newswire, “It is a true story based in the late 1800s in Calcutta about a woman serial killer. I am looking forward to the challenge of portraying a killer as the lead.”

While the film is set in Calcutta, the novel is set in the Indian city of Pune and tells the story of Tara, who after a wild youth, faces challenges when she is older and must rekindle her relationship with her daughter.

Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize, the novel has sold over 150,000 copies worldwide.

Translation rights have been sold into 26 languages, including German, French, Spanish, Korean, Russian and Arabic.

“Depicting complicated human connections is what drives most of my projects and I look forward to delving into the complex, layered, and at times surprisingly dark mother-daughter relationship that is so shockingly illustrated in this novel,” Mehta had said earlier. “Burnt Sugar’ is often sprinkled with razor-sharp humour and its unexpected take on the old-as-time relationship left me gasping. It grabbed me from its first sentence and I couldn’t say yes fast enough when I was asked to bring the vision to the screen.”