Director – Ronny Sen
Director of Photography – Shreya Dev Dube
Screenplay – Ronny Sen, Soumyak Kanti DeBiswas
Cast – Tanmay Dhanania (Byang), Sumeet Thakur (Ronnie), Joyraj Bhattacharjee(Tamanna Bhai), Saurabh Saraswat (Deshik), Kalpan Mitra (Toto), Raja Chakravorty (Biplab), Sounak Kundu (Potol), Rahul Dutta(Pablo), Sreejita Mitra (Orna), Soumyajit Majumdar (Gere Bappa).

A pack of Calcutta youth seek greater lust and life in their relentless pursuit of Brown Sugar (dirty heroin) … and it’s unsustainable high – says the log line of the film Cat Sticks.

The film takes place on a rainy night in Calcutta, where the film presents nocturnal lives of anonymous addicts on the margins of a city on the verge of collapse. Having won the Grand Jury awards at the Slamdance and Mammoth Lakes Film Festivals in the United States in 2019, acclaimed photographer Ronny Sen’s directorial debut Cat Sticks comes from a personal experience. Growing up, Sen had witnessed the violence and ostracization associated with drug addicts and addiction.

“I truly believe I own these hallucinatory experiences. Living in a city plagued with oblivion, I consider it my task as a writer and director to ensure that these nameless and invisible stories get a lease of life. As globalization and neo-liberalism turn the urban landscape into an odd mix of exhausted tradition and hurried modernization, we stare at the city’s underbelly,” Sen says.

Communicating these thoughts through classic use of black and white vignettes is what sets the film apart.

According to Photographer and Filmmaker Sooni Taraporewala, Cat Sticks is evocative, funny and heartbreaking at the same time. “Cat Sticks is an impressive film debut by the accomplished photographer Ronny Sen. It takes place over one rainy night in Calcutta where a group of addicts chase their fix of brown sugar. Beautifully shot with great performances, it is evocative, funny and heartbreaking,” she says.

In an interview with Elle, Sooni says the story of Cat Sticks inspires her and makes the ghosts of lost souls come alive.