Daayen Ya Baayen
Directed by Bela Negi
India, 2010, 115 Minutes, Hindi (with English Subtitles) US Premiere
Cast- Deepak Dobriyal, Aditi Beri, Bharti Bhatt, Jeetendra Bisht

After an unsuccessful stint as an actor in Mumbai, Ramesh Majila returns to his small Himalayan village fresh with hope and the desire to make a new start. Seeing himself as the artistic voice of the village, he boasts of a proposal to start an Arts' Academy in the village. However to his dismay his ostentatious city manner and quirky traits compounded with a penchant for catalyzing disaster reduce him to a joke amongst the villagers. Adding to his discomposure is a wife pestering him to go back to the city, a young son who is looking desperately for a role model in him and a nagging financial situation.

In a dramatic turn of events, Ramesh shoots to heroic status overnight when a chance entry into a television contest wins him a luxury car. Now desired by women, envied and grudgingly admired by men, Ramesh becomes the focal point of the village, giving career advice, gracing functions, playing host to new found friends and relatives. But soon Ramesh finds that this new spot in the sun is treacherously tenuous. The car is completely incongruous in its surroundings and for Ramesh, who is trying to match his aspirations to it, the slide downhill begins again. When the car is stolen, he sets out on a bizarre journey to recover more than his prized possession, his lost dignity.

Bela Negi was born in in the Himalayan Indian state of Uttarakhand. She finished her schooling in Nainital before she moved to Delhi University for a B.A. Hons in English Literature. This was followed by a degree in cinema with a specialization in film editing at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune in 1997.

Nitric Films a production house run by Bela and her husband Subho produces ads, corporate films and has line produced ‘Daayen ya Baayen’.
 
‘Daayen ya Baayen’ is Bela’s debut feature film and has been written, directed and edited by her. In the past few years she has written a handful of scripts of which DYB has been the first to get made.