Collaborations between Indian and Bangladeshi filmmakers have mostly resulted in mass entertainers featuring popular actors from Kolkata and Dhaka. Although award-winning filmmakers such as Basu Chatterjee and Goutam Ghose have worked with the finest talents and scripts from both countries (Hothat Brishti and Moner Manush and Padma Nadir Majhi and Shankhachil respectively), the populist trend was set by Beder Meye Josna in 1989. Featuring Kolkata actor Chiranjit, Bangladeshi actress Anju Ghosh and a breathtaking 31 songs, the film about a snake charmer’s daughter ran for years all over Bengal and Bangladesh.
What followed was a slew of low-cost productions about folklore, joint families, class wars and social dramas often inspired by B-grade Bollywood titles and remakes of Bangladeshi and Telugu films. The examples include Shakti Samanta’s Anyay Abichar (1985), starring Mithun Chakraborty, Utpal Dutt and Rozina and the blockbuster Ami Shudhu Cheyechi Tomay (2014), a remake of the Telugu film Arya.
The latest cross-border partnership promises to be different. Celebrated Bangladeshi director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki has teamed up with the actor Irrfan for Doob: No Bed of Roses. Farooki’s sixth feature has been co-produced by Irrfan, who also plays the protagonist. Doob is the story of a death that connects two families. The drama has allgedly been inspired by the two marriages of Bangladeshi writer, dramatist, screenwriter and filmmaker Humayun Ahmed. But Farooki has consistently denied any similarities between Ahmed’s life and his movie plot. Ahmed died in New York City in 2012 after battling cancer, leading to some dispute between his families over burial rites. Doob, which stars Bangladeshi actors as well as Bengal star Parno Mittra, is aiming for a 2017 release
Farooki’s films often swing between the real and the surreal. Among his best-known international titles is Television (2012), about a community leader who bans television in his village. The feted filmmaker spoke to Scroll.in about the Ahmed controversy and his experience of working with one of Indian cinema’s finest exports.
Your film is being talked about as a biopic of Humayun Ahmed. What is the basis of these reports?
I don’t know the exact reason. I received a call from the managing director of the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation, who heads the readers’ panel for India-Bangladesh joint productions. Anyone interested in making a joint venture with India needs to submit their scripts to this panel for approval. He was very happy and enthusiastic about the script. He asked me whether I was inspired by Humayun Ahmed’s life. That was the first time I heard of it. Now I am hearing this more after recent media reports. I have a humble answer: let’s wait for the film, watch for ourselves, and we will get to know what’s in there.
How did Irrfan become the film’s co-producer and lead?
Ever since I started writing the script, I could only visualise Irrfan in the role. This film is like Mount Fuji in winter – with all the layers of snow outside, it looks so calm and gentle. However, if you dig deep, you will see the wrath of fire.
The protagonists of this film needed to have that magic in their eyes – they needed to look calm and composed from outside, and inside, they needed to be volcanoes. I knew that no one other than Irrfan could pull off such a controlled and natural performance. However, I was aware of his schedule and star status and had minimum expectations. I decided to try my luck and wrote to my filmmaker friend Anup Singh, who was shooting a film with Irrfan at the time [Qissa]. Anup Singh connected the both of us. Before reading my script, Irrfan did some research on my work and okayed the film. It happened so fast, as if by magic.
I still remember the day I was on my way to meet him. I was sitting at the Dhaka airport, reading a newspaper, and was shaken by a report that he had to let go of Steven Spielberg’s film for an unknown reason. Once I met him, we talked about art, childhood, his mother. And here we are now.
The synopsis and first look reminds one of the worlds that Jhumpa Lahiri creates.
I can’t comment on that. Jhumpa Lahiri is a great writer who evokes pathos quietly without being sentimental. I hope my film evokes pathos just as quietly, and people get to decode the syntax of pain hidden beneath the film’s layers. Also, I am not gifted or educated enough to create someone else’s world. So I always end up creating my own world. But then again, there is no unique world here. We all receive inspiration from different places that we are not even aware of.
‘Television’, ‘Third Person Singular’ and ‘Ant Story’ have all been film festival darlings, especially for the way in which they blur the lines between realism and surrealism. ‘Doob’ seems to be treading a different path.
It’s true that my film keeps shuttling between real and surreal worlds. It is because we live in two worlds at the same time. To some extent, you will find this aspect in Doob too. As for stylistic connections, I think this film is very different from my previous works. It’s more gentle, unhurried, emotional and atmospheric. It’s very different thematically too – my first attempt at family drama.
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