SVF

Meet Bengal’s first teenaged sleuth

Mainak Bhaumik’s Goyenda Junior will see a new detective duo, rather, a teen-adult pair of sleuths, in town. And playing detectives are the real-life father-son duo, Shantilal and Rwitobroto Mukherjee.

“In this film, we see a promising new detective franchise where the teen-adult sleuth duo solves mysteries together, with the teen stealing the show. This whodunnit murder mystery has relatable themes of family bonds, love lost and found, all wrapped in a plot peppered with clues, unexpected surprises and twists that will keep audiences guessing,” Rwitobroto told us.

Goyenda Junior is about a 16-year-old orphan boy, Bikram, who is a crime-fiction fan and has a secret crush on his schoolmate, Tuki. He is unofficially hired by Tuki’s overprotective police detective father, Sanjay, to solve the perfect crime — a murder cleverly disguised as a natural death. How Bikram and Sanjay prove that it was in fact a murder despite the lack of evidence or a murder weapon is what this film is about.

Speaking about the film, Mainak told us, “As a young adult, I was always a big fan of whodunnit murder mysteries. Over the past five years, I’ve been thinking about making a teen detective film. It started with me re-visiting the Pandob Goenda stories in 2015. I was desperate to adapt it only to realise that the computer graphics would be too expensive. That’s where I considered the idea of creating my own detective, Bikram — an orphan teenager with many personal issues and a strong need to fit into school, who ultimately finds a father figure in his Watson. I wanted to make a film about the making of a goyenda. Bikram slowly becomes a detective in the film and finds his calling.”