A.R. Rahman Unveils Music Documentary ‘Headhunting to Beatboxing’ at Cannes (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran Oscar-, BAFTA-, Golden Globe- and Grammy-winning composer A.R. Rahman has unveiled music documentary “Headhunting to Beatboxing” at the Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by Rohit Gupta, the documentary follows the Naga tribe in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland, once engulfed in the depths of violence and bloodshed, that resurrects itself through the healing power of music and emerges through a musical renaissance.

Rahman was always intrigued by the music of India’s northeast and he visited the region for the first time when he was invited to the annual Hornbill Festival, a cultural celebration of all the ethnic groups of Nagaland. “I was blown away, the whole story, that we’ve been hearing for years, decades, and suddenly the transformation of young people taking to music and they’re all out in the streets,” Rahman told Variety. “It was like a dreamland for me.

I said, ‘Oh, my God, this exists and nobody knows about it’.” The composer immediately called Gupta, whose Netflix documentary series “The Creative Indians” he had featured in, and who specializes in shooting on the iPhone, as he rated his work highly.