It took one phrase, “father-daughter confrontation”, from the producer to sow the seeds of Kadak Singh in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s mind. From there, he developed the crime thriller that stars Pankaj Tripathi and Sanjana Sanghi. After the thought-provoking Pink (2016), this is the director’s third Hindi feature film. In Bollywood, where filmmakers are in a hurry to announce their next as soon as their current project releases, Chowdhury patiently waits for a film to take shape.

His reason is simple—a good story requires time. “I used to wait for my female school friends. They’d never come, but I still loved waiting. Similarly, I waited for 42 years [before] I made my first Hindi film. My wife, my friend and I put money in, and we made it. After that, I got offers every day, but the next film I made was after three years. I don’t want to rush. You need three years to write a script, to understand the characters and fall in love with them. Your art is important, not you,” says the National Award-winning director.

It’s not just his characters, but also his actors that Chowdhury seems to be in love with. He is all praise for Tripathi, whose character is battling retrograde amnesia while trying to piece together the events of the past, in the ZEE5 thriller.

“It’s such a difficult role. But Pankaj is like water; he made it so easy. Complicated things can be easily made. To make a simple statement is the toughest.”

The director is equally happy that he could rope in two actors he wanted to work with for long—Parvathy Thiruvothu and Bangladeshi actor Jaya Ahsan.

“I had told Parvathy almost six months ago, sitting in a Bandra café, that we have to do something together. On the other hand, after watching a Bengali film of Jaya, I had written to her that we had to make a Bengali film. The stars aligned in a way that we ended up doing a Hindi film.”

Few things give an actor as much high as a well-written script does. Pankaj Tripathi remembers being elated when he read the script of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Father, which has been penned by Ritesh Shah.

Considering the actor has a keen eye for stories, it says a thing or two about the script’s merit, when he states, “It’s one of the most brilliant scripts that I’ve read in the past five-six years. When I am so excited about the [material], I am sure the outcome will live up to it.”

Father is an investigative drama set against the backdrop of a dysfunctional family coming together. The unit wrapped up the shoot in Kolkata recently. As he collaborated for the first time with Malayalam actor Parvathy Thiruvothu, and Sanjana Sanghi, Tripathi says teaming up with artistes of different sensibilities leaves one richer.

“The film stars Parvathy, Sanjana, actor Jaya Ahsan from Dhaka, and a lot of new artistes. It’s [joyful] to have artistes of different industries and regions come together.”

A collaboration with Chowdhury was on his wish-list ever since he saw the director’s Pink (2016). He describes the union as “magical”. “I had such a good time working with Tony da that I didn’t even realise when the shooting finished. The film is a father-daughter story; it explores their bond and how far they can go for each other,” says the actor, who plays father to Sanghi.