For his debut feature film Little Thomas, director Kaushal Oza agrees he has struck a dream team in lead actors Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal, as well as producer Anurag Kashyap. As the slice-of-life offering gears up for its August 19 première at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, the director says he couldn’t have asked for a better producer than Kashyap.

“Anurag is a zero-interference producer. I remember he and all the other producers had liked one piece of music, while I had liked another. Ultimately, I went with my gut. Only a producer who has also been a director can offer such freedom to the filmmaker,” says Oza.

He had an equally delightful experience with his lead actors as they joined forces to tell the story of a seven-year-old boy trying to bring his parents together. While Devaiah ensured a breezy working environment, the director praises Dugal for her hard work.

“Her character is a piano teacher, and Rasika learnt the piano for eight months so that she could play the classical pieces. She also prepared hard to get the Goan accent right. She had just come off months of Mirzapur shoot, so to be able to switch so convincingly between the two worlds took a lot of work.”