Riya Sharma (BOMBAY TIMES; December 14, 2017)

Actress-director Nandita Das, who has made a film on the life of playwright and author Saadat Hasan Manto, says that she is not afraid of the flak,if any,that the film may receive.Talking at a session at the Urdu festival Jashn-e-Rekhta in Delhi, the actress insisted that she has faced trouble for films earlier in her career. “I had faced problems with my films like Fire and Firaaq. Yeh toh hissa ban gaya hai life ka. Pehli baat toh ye hai ki koi bhi film aati hai toh hum usey pehle hi controversial bana dete hain. A movie like Padmavati seems to be glorifying the Rajput valour...trailer dekh ke toh yehi laga aur jinhone dekhi unhone bhi yehi bola, uss mein bhi problems aa gayi. I am not afraid for my next because aise darr ke kuch karne lage toh humein toh kuch karna hi nahi chahiye. Humein na gaana chahiye, na humein films banani chahiye. We as people can either let this continue or we can help each other in this,” she said.

About her film, Manto, she added, “We are not sensationalizing any topic, the problem that Manto faced in that era, he wanted to write on topics that bothered him, but the agony of the writer was that the society resisted what he wanted to write, and that is what we seem to be facing even today.”