Budding filmmaker Dikshita Das had a natural proclivity toward art and cinema from a very young age. "I always wanted to do something in the field of cinema and decided to pursue a degree in communication design from Bangalore. I finally moved back to Kolkata in 2016 to join the Bengali film industry,” recalls Dikshita.
After assisting filmmakers like Sudeshna Roy and Abhijit Guha, Parambrata Chatterjee, Sujan Neel Mukherjee, Leena Ganguly among others in various creative capacities, Dikshita has made her first short film, Promise, that's ready for festival rounds.
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Tell us the idea behind Promise.
This is a story of a father, daughter and her lover and is a tribute to love and longings. It lays out how distance should never matter in love. The film starts with an emotionally distraught girl Joyita, who’s unable to cope with her lover’s (Neel) hectic work schedule. She has a very heartfelt conversation with her father (Uday), who offers to narrate a story that proves to be life-changing for her. The film brings out the subtle nuances of a relationship and finally ends with a message of accepting the person, situation and most importantly time to keep misapprehensions at bay.
The role of the father has been enacted by actor Sabyasachi Chakroborty.
How did u go about the casting?
From the very initial stage of writing, I could literally imagine Sabyasachi in the role of the father and my mentor, filmmaker Sudeshna Roy, helped me connect with him.
For Neil and Joyita’s characters, Biplab and Udita were a natural choice.
Biplab has worked with some prolific directors of the Kannada Film industry including Anup Bhandari in Rajaratha and Arvind Kamath in Arisadvarga. And Udita has been working in the Bengali film industry as an actor in various films and serials.
What were the experiences of the shoot?
Promise is a story which has a story inside. So we shot in multiple locations and had many time zones. The challenging part was dealing with kids of different age groups -- we have 5 kids in the film. The songs were shot in Meghalaya. We are lucky to have some of the industry’s most experienced people associating with us including cinematographer Raktim Mondal, composer Ashu Chakraborty and sound designer Saugata Banerjee. But we also have a debutant film composer Abhilash Mohanty (Rika), who has given some very fresh music that just added to the soul of the film.
Movies which inspire you?
A film with a meaningful message that adds value through entertainment, irrespective of genre, always attracts me. Sometimes an open ending provokes the audience to think and decide what's right or wrong is good.
What kind of movies do you plan to make?
There’s no road map as such. I would like to pick up concepts that would genuinely trigger my thought process.
I am also looking forward to directing films written by other directors, producers, writers or productions.
Your upcoming projects?
I am working on two stories for TV Originals besides a feature film.