MUMBAI: Indian filmmaker Partho Sengupta has sought funding from the crowd for his upcoming project Arunoday (Sunrise), a psychological thriller that addresses the taboo of child abuse in India.

The project has attracted over 80 crowd-funders on the website indiegogo.com who have contributed over $10,000 for the film. “We have extensively used Facebook, Twitter and email to campaign for the funding,” avers the filmmaker.

The deadline for the project to achieve its goal on indiegogo is 28 May. The film is likely to get into the production mode this winter.

Sengupta had to turn to crowd funding after he failed to find an Indian lead producer for the project which had generated co-production interest from a Dutch production house.

Similar was the case of Onir. After being refused financial backing from several film financers due to the film‘s controversial subject matter, the filmmaker took to Facebook and pulled in donations from far flung countries like the US and Australia.

Collectively, more than one third of the film‘s Rs 30 million budget was raised via the web, with major backers coming in the form of the US-based psychotherapist Sarah Loper Sengupta and The Humsafar Trust, a gay rights campaign group.