Filmmaker Indrasis Acharya had always wanted to tell stories, human stories that stir the mind without going emotionally overboard. An associate director of an MNC, his exposure to the corporate world for the past 15 years has made this 42-year-old director realise that Bengali cinema needs to be more realistic. Whether it was his debut feature Biloo Rakkhosh or the much-acclaimed Pupa, Indrasis has always dealt with human emotional crises the way they are in reality. “I feel we are too stuck with the same old fairy tales, romance and thrillers. We need to go beyond that and tell real stories. I try to portray emotions in a balanced manner on screen,” Indrasis tells us. We had a lovely chat on his much-anticipated movie Parcel, his future projects and how a National Award doesn’t matter to him. Excerpts:
Did you feel bad that Pupa didn’t make it at the National Awards this year?
I don’t set score by the National Awards. It really doesn’t matter much to me since Pupa has been received so well by the audience and has been vetted both nationally and internationally, getting more than 17 awards including the Critics Choice Film Awards.
Tell us about your upcoming film, Parcel.
Parcel has a non-explicit, realistic and open-ended script. It shows human reactions to certain situations without the reasons being told. Here, Rituparna Sengupta and Saswata Chatterjee play a doctor couple with a teenage daughter. Rituparna’s character Nandini starts receiving her pictures, new and old, in parcels from some unknown sender. This leads to a fear psychosis in her mind and she starts suspecting a few known people around her. Meanwhile, Saswata’s character suffers a setback when a death occurs at the hospital and a crisis develops around whether it was a natural death or was it due to his negligence. These two crises lead to the main crisis in the movie.
Were you disappointed with the number of theatres that Pupa was screened at? What’s your plan with Parcel?
I have bad luck when it comes to getting theatres. In the case of Biloo Rakkhosh, I didn’t get a screening at Nandan at all, whereas for Pupa, Nandan screened us only after four weeks. I want Parcel to roam a few international and national festivals before its release.
What are your next projects?
I have two to three scripts, which are under discussion now, and among them, one is a story by Sanjib Chattopadhyay, which is also a bit of a controversial story.
sharmishtha.g@newindianexpress.com
@sharmidas