Recently, Emraan Hashmi shared a glimpse of his look from the movie Harami on social media. The film, directed by ad-filmmaker Shyam Madiraju, is headed to the 25th Busan International Film Festival. However, the film’s team will no longer travel with the film to the festival, which will be held next week online and on-ground, too.

Talking about it, LA-based Shyam, who has also made a few short films and a feature in the past, says, “I am excited and nervous like any other filmmaker. Harami is a labour of love and effort. We’ve run into so much bad luck with almost every big film festival being called off due to Coronavirus. We were being selected for some big ones. The entire team was excited about the Busan Festival. They still are, but we’re not travelling to South Korea anymore. The country has barred people from other countries to travel there due to the pandemic. So, Emraan, I and everyone else involved with the film had to cancel our tickets at the last minute. We’ll be there virtually, though.”

Harami has Emraan playing a merciless crime lord, who controls a gang of pickpockets in Mumbai. The film, which is selected to be a part of the main competition section (New Horizons), was shot at real locations in Mumbai, including railway stations. “I wanted it to be all real. It was unimaginable to escape people’s eyes while shooting at these busy locations. It was laborious, tedious and rewarding to be able to pull off a shoot like that,” says the director, adding, “I had meticulously planned this film for two years, and Emraan could see that. He asked me if I planned to make Sagar bhai (his character) look the way I had written it. I told him to grow his hair and beard. He laughed and promised to keep the beard. He embodied the look when we finally got down to shooting. It’s like this with every good actor – he or she becomes the person they’re playing. Emraan treats the camera like a magic door that takes him into a different world.”