After Bangkok, Singapore, London and America, it’s time for Tollywood to go to Venice. The Bengali film titled Shukno Lanka, starring Mithun Chakraborty, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Roopa Ganguly, will travel to the 65th Venice International Film Festival.

Directed by Gaurav Pande and produced by Soumya Ganguly’s Chivach Media, Shukno Lanka features Mithun as struggling artiste Nandalal, Sabyasachi as an ace film-maker and Roopa his wife. American actress Linda Arsenio (of the John Abraham-Arshad Warsi-starrer Kabul Express) plays a film producer.

The Venice sequence revolves around Sabyasachi, who goes to the festival to receive an award and meets Linda.

“Shukno Lanka is a film-within-a-film and in the process many relationships are formed. I chose this name because it is the spice which adds flavour and taste to a dish. Here Mithun is the shukno lanka!” says Gaurav, whose first feature film was Stumped starring Raveena Tandon. He had earlier scripted Basu Bhattacharya’s Aastha, starring Rekha and Om Puri and also Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Anuranan.

“We will shoot in Venice for 10 days; the rest of the film will be shot in Calcutta,” adds Gaurav, who grew up on Southern Avenue before shifting base to Mumbai.

A host of Tolly stars will play themselves in the film-within-the-film. Pritam will compose the music, his first for a Bengali film. “Shukno Lanka has a budget of more than Rs 2 crore,” said the film’s executive producer Arindam Sil.

...not Vidya

Vidya Balan’s loss is Tanissha’s gain. Goutam Halder was supposed to shoot his second film Mukti with his Bhalo Theko leading lady but a date problem forced Vidya to drop out, paving the way for Kajol’s younger sister.

“The story remains the same. We will shoot a portion of the film in Varanasi,” said Halder.

In her Tollywood debut, Tanissha’s co-star is her mother Tanuja and the two will be pitted against each other in Mukti.

Tanissha plays Hasi, a married woman with a kid and a tenant of Bijolibala (Tanuja). Soumitra Chatterjee plays Tanuja’s brother. The film goes on the floors in mid-July.