Actor and writer Chandan Roy Sanyal’s directorial So Sicily has been selected as the finalist at Cinephone International Smartphone Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain. He shot the movie for a month in 2019, on a smartphone, with a four-member crew, across Italy.

“After I wrote So Sicily, I thought, instead of asking people for money to make it, let me collaborate with my two friends and shoot it the way I want. I also reached out to an actor friend residing in Munich who reached Sicily where we did a workshop,” shares Sanyal, 41, who adds that he also acted in it.

The actor shares that had it not been for the pandemic, he would have sent the film to other film festivals as well.

Talking about how he thoroughly enjoyed the process, Sanyal says, “There are some stories that one can tell with just a camera and an actor. We shot across oceans, deserts, forts, palaces, churches, trains, ships, airports and stations. We took a car from Rome and drove down to South Italy.”

Over the years, with his own money, Sanyal has made a few short films and shared them with different directors to get their feedback. The Jabariya Jodi (2019) actor says, “I’ve shown them to people I admire — (filmmakers) Vishal Bhardwaj, Prakash Jha and Imtiaz Ali. They appreciated my storytelling and encouraged me to make more films.”

But does he have any plans of directing a feature film? “Yes, I’ve been writing. I want to tell new-age stories,” he concludes.