LOGLINE:

A young man becomes the unlikely mentor for a bright and self-reliant little girl.

 
SYNOPSIS:

An intelligent, lonely young girl thinks she's found a friend in a man who works in a neighbor's apartment. But even as he shows kindness towards her, his true colors eventually teach her the true meaning of betrayal.

 
WRITER/DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:

The inspiration for Ratana came soon after I saw Satyajit Ray's 1961 short film The Postmaster. I found that film, set in turn-of-the-century rural India, to be one of the most heartbreaking and perfectly executed short films I had seen. Ray made the film as part of a trilogy of shorts comprising his feature film Teen Kanya (or Three Daughters), and after seeing a screening of the feature at New York's MoMA, I decided to develop an updated version of the Postmaster story set in New York City.

I sought out Ray's source material, a short story also called The Postmaster written in 1891 by Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Soon after I started writing the screenplay, I realized that the plot would have to change substantially for my New York setting, but knew that the characters or at least their motivations and desires could remain at the heart of the story.

While I don't begin to assume that Ratana is an equal to Satyajit Ray's exquisite tale, my hope is that the emotions of hope and abandonment that make The Postmaster so universal have carried through in my new take on the story.