A 32-year old Cuncolim boy, Pervis Milroy Goes, who nurtured a dream of devoting his life to art, has finally reached a point where he always wished to be. With his feature film ‘Welcome M1ll10ns’ being qualified in ‘general category’ at 91st Academy Awards 2019
BHARATI PAWASKAR
Buy a lottery ticket and hope the numbers align in your favour, bringing you money and the promise of a different future. In a city in south Goa, Cuncolim, an old man Alfred D’Souza clutches on to this dream. Then he wins the lottery and his life turns into a nightmare. A corrupt police officer is forced to reopen the unsolved case of lottery scam and he gets caught up in an unexpected situation. “This is the story of my feature film in a nutshell,” claims Milroy Goes, director of ‘Welcome M1ll10ns’ - a numerically aligned name that’s special for more than one reasons - its Oscar ambition.
The film is being selected to contest the Oscars 2019 - 91st Academy Awards 2019 in the general category. “We took a chance sending the film for consideration, not imagining we would get a response,” says Milroy recollecting the long process. “It takes six months for the Academy to check all requests. We received an email saying we qualify to contest in the general category. We submitted the film and they assigned us a distributor (Double Exposure Distribution) in LA. On November 30 this year we had its Los Angeles release at Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills, US,” elaborates a proud Milroy, a simpleton from Cuncolim who is fluent in many languages.
‘Welcome M1ll10ns’ was an idea to collaborate with different artists from different regions like Goa, Punjab, UK and Los Angeles. “It’s an attempt to make a multilingual film - as we have Konkani, Hindi, English and Punjabi speaking people in it. We wanted to have languages spoken in different regions as it would connect Goan cinema with the masses,” quips Milroy.
The film cast has big names associated with it - Sohan Borcar, Joanne Da Cunha, Razak Khan, Les Menezes, Manna Mohie, Kathryn Michelle and Dylan Rodrigues - all of who are international artists. The music is by Mikkel Lentz and Kishan Mohan, cinematography and film editing by Yash Sawant, casting by Sky Prakash, art direction by Priya Simoes, costume design by Kim Pereira and makeup department was taken care by Sheena Gracias, Karuna Korgaonkar and Tracy Pinto.
“It’s wonderful experience to be in collaboration with beautiful people from all over the places, including Kathryn Michelle from LA and Manpreet Manna Mohie - a businessman from Punjab who lives in UK, and who is the producer of the film as well as also an actor in it. This beautiful team allowed us to finally reach the academy in general category,” shares Milroy who feels honoured to be a part of this project. He along with Stephen Lawrence Rebello has written the script of this film.
“We just wanted to do something big with this film, that’s why we have teamed up with so many different people from different places. We have this beautiful relationship with people from India, United Kingdom and United States of America,” observes Milroy whose career kick-started in 2008 when he began directing short films.
Milroy made directorial debut in Konkani cinema with the film ‘The Victim’ within four years, in 2012. Best known for his films, Milroy has done an ad film with Australian Cricketer Brett Lee and also directed music videos - one of which was featured on the channel VH1 India.
It was in 2015, that Milroy experienced a moment of pride when he was selected to be one of the Jury members along with Goan cinematographer Sharmad Raiturkar and filmmaker Swapnil Shetkar for the first edition of the ‘Goa Short Film Carnival’ by Goa Talkies.
A short film by Milroy, ‘Peon – Ek Chaprasi’ was premiered at ‘Goa Short Film Carnival 2015’, a three-day festival exclusively for short films. And on the closing day Milroy received recognition at the hands of the then chief minister of Goa, Laxmikant Parsekar.
It was in 2017 that Milroy wrote and directed feature film Welcome M1ll10ns. “A year later, in 2018, the film gets its release at Laemmle’s Music Hall in Beverly Hills, and gets qualified for 91st Academy Awards in General Category,” quips a happy Milroy.
In his decade-long journey, the year 2018, that’s soon going to be past, seems to be really lucky for him as Milroy along with Rajesh Patil, Nalini Elvino De Sousa and Lynsey Miller played the role as jury members for the Short Film Competition ‘Get High On Life’ organised by Human Touch Foundation in Goa. In the second half of the same year, in August 2018 to be precise, Milroy launched the YouTube Series ‘Learn from Mis(takes) with Milroy Goes’ produced by Manna Mohie.
Career graph as a director/editor/writer
The Victim - theatrical feature, Konkani
Expect The Unexpected - short film, English
Unexpected - short film, English
Vengeance - short film, English
Let My Life Go By - music video, English
Tum Saath Nahi - music video, Hindi
Been Here Before - short film, English
Adêus Moga - TV movie, Konkani
Peon ‘Ek Chaprasi’ - short film, Hindi
Tunch Mhojea Jivit - music video, Konkani
Welcome M1ll10ns - feature film, Konkani, Hindi, English, Punjabi
Go Goa Go - music video, English
Formalin - music video, English, Konkani
Tere Bin Nai Lagda - music video, Punjabi
Learn from Mis(takes) with Milroy Goes, English
