On Saturday, director Kanu Behl’s Despatch had its Indian première at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. But the filmmaker’s journey of the Manoj Bajpayee-starrer began in 2016 as he, with co-writer Ishani Banerjee, set out to explore the world of journalism.

“Stories about journalism often end up being one-dimensional—there are God-like protagonists fighting to break a story. I always felt that a better understanding of how the world looked from the inside was missing. I had been toying with the idea, and it criss-crossed with so much violence happening with journalists, starting with Gauri Lankesh. The world around us was changing so much. So, I decided to do a Faustian piece about a journalist, who is breaking a story, but not only with an altruistic purpose. Ishani and I dove into eight-nine months of research, looking into several cases of journalists getting [killed].”

While writing the protagonist, Behl didn’t have Bajpayee in mind. But after the script was complete, the actor became his first choice. “Manoj was the first person I went to. As a director, you are always looking for collaborators who are in love with cinema. Manoj is in love with the art of filmmaking. It’s amazing that he has had a trailblazing career, and yet he approaches every film with that impulse.”

Months ago, Bajpayee had told mid-day that working with Behl was challenging (Kanu is a difficult and tedious director, Aug 20).

Mention this to the director and he laughs, “As a director, it’s my job to push the actor in a new territory. Often, films feel staccato because they are done from a pedestal where the filmmaker [operates from]. The moment you accept that you don’t know everything as a director, it gives the film freedom. Some days, you don’t know what you are doing, nor does the actor. My job is to make myself and my actors feel a little lost once in a while. It’s only from there that something new emerges.”

Since his first film, Titli (2015), Behl has championed indie cinema. Even though event films are dominating the scene, he is unfazed. “If you see the films that have re-released now like Tumbbad [2018] and Khosla Ka Ghosla [2006], they might not have done box-office numbers at that time. The audience only sees the emotion of a film. Post COVID, the world has changed so much. Cinema is being turned into more of an event, but I have faith in the audience. If event films are just a circus, eventually the audience will reject them and ask for something that [moves] them.”