Hanuman is a 1998 French-Indian film directed by Frédéric Fougea. The film stars Scottish actor Robert Cavanah and Indian actress Tabu in the lead roles. The film was dubbed in Danish as Hanuman og abernes tempel with Henrik Koefoed, Vibeke Hastrup, and Søren Sætter-Lassen providing the voices of Tom, Anja, and Ashok, respectively.[1] The film was alternatively titled as The Monkey Who Knew Too Much. It was the on-screen debut for Nithya Menen as a child artist.[2]

Hanuman
Poster of French version titled Hanúman
Directed byFrédéric Fougea
Written byFrédéric Fougea
Michel Fessler
Produced byNathalie Auffret
StarringRobert Cavanah
Tabu
CinematographyBernard Lutic
Edited byYann Dedet
Frédérique Lebel
Music byLaurent Ferlet
Production
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Distributed byGaumont Buena Vista International
Release date
  • 28 October 1998 (1998-10-28) (France)
Running time
84 minutes
CountriesFrance
India
LanguageEnglish

Cast

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  • Monkey as Hanou
  • Robert Cavanah as Scotsman Tom
  • Tabu as Anja
  • Nathalie Auffret as Alice, a French woman
  • Javed Jaffrey as Ashok, a rich politician
  • Tom Alter as Tom's father
  • Baby Nithya Menen as Munna, Anja's younger sister
  • Khalid Tyabji as Deva, a monk
  • Sidney Kean as Roberto
  • Jim Adhi Limas as Louis
  • Govind Raoa as Anja's father
  • Veena Sajnani as the minister
  • Hans Kaushik as Young Sadhu
  • Paul Bandey as the auctioneer
  • Yatin Karyekar as a local police officer
Voice Cast
  • William Doherty as the narrator

Release

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Carla Meyer of SF Gate praised the performances of Cavanah and the monkeys and wrote that "By the last third, "Hanuman" has become a pretty predictable good-versus- evil story. But the picture's great beauty, and the obvious care that it took to make it, override the triteness".[3] Dennis Harvey of Variety similarly wrote that " Fougea’s deft orchestration of two trained and 50 wild monkeys — who make antic, appealing camera subjects — nicely suspends disbelief, while his brisk pacing makes the somewhat formulaic script go down easily".[4] On the contrary, Jesper Vestergard of CinemaZone criticized the film and wrote that "The film's expression never manages to land a place where it can satisfy neither children nor adults, and the magical element of history with the monkey god never comes to its own".[1]

Awards

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Award Category Recipient(s) and nominee(s) Work Result
Cinequest Film Festival Audience Favorite Choice Award - Honorable Mention Frédéric Fougea Hanuman Won

References

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  1. ^ a b "Hanuman og abernes tempel - CinemaZone.dk - et filmmagasin i bredformat". www.cinemazone.dk.
  2. ^ "Hanuman (1998)". BFI. Archived from the original on 5 May 2019. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
  3. ^ Graham, Bob; Meyer, Carla (21 September 2001). "FILM CLIPS / Also opening this week". SFGate.
  4. ^ Harvey, Dennis (18 October 1999). "Review: 'Hanuman'". Variety. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
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