Two years back, when Ram Kamal Mukherjee made his big switch from journalism to filmmaking, he had no idea he would accomplish writing five books and making five films so far. Debuting with short film Cakewalk starring Esha Deol Takhtani, Ram Kamal’s second short, Season’s Greetings, starring Celina Jaitly and Lillete Dubey just got screened on ZEE5 and the director is currently working on his first full-length Bengali biopic, Binodini Dasi. We had a short chat with the scribe-turned-filmmaker about his work and more. Excerpts:
Your second film Season’s Greetings has made quite a noise with the United Nation Free and Equal and legends like Amitabh Bachchan endorsing it.
This film is a tribute to the legendary filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh from Bengal and I am grateful that Lilllete Dubey and Celina Jaitly Haag agreed to be a part of this venture. We were supposed to release it in March but now due to COVID-19 pandemic, we had to reschedule everything. It got selected at seven prestigious international festivals including Cardiff International Film Festival and won the best director jury award at Rajasthan International Film Festival this year. The film deals with LGBTQIA issue in a very subtle manner and has also been selected at the Kashish Film Festival 2020 in Mumbai, Asia’s largest LGBTQIA film festival.
In a span of two years, you have managed to direct almost five films. That’s a decent number.
After Season’s Greetings, I made a Bengali short Rickshawala, with debutant Avinash Dwivedi as the protagonist and it won the best actor and director awards at Ayodhya International Film Festival this year. Then we made Broken Frame out of my fiction Long Island Iced Tea starring Rohit Bose Roy and Ritabhari Chakraborty. It deals with marriage and infidelity. Then I made Shubho Bijoya, a romantic film loosely based on O Henry’s classic The Gift of the Magi. Now, I am working on Binodini Dasi, the biopic on Bengal’s famous theatre actress.
Tell us a little about it.
I am working on the script right now and the cast is not yet finalised. It will cover the entire journey of Noti Binodini and her fight to establish herself in the social strata as someone more than a nautch girl.
Any actor you would like to work with...
I would like to work with Abhishek Bachchan. He is extremely talented and underutilised. I would also like to work with Tabu, Madhuri Dixit, Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt, and do an out-and-out comedy with Ranveer Singh and Ayushman Khurrana.