Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 12, 2018)

On Sunday, Indian football captain Sunil Chhetri, with 102 appearances, joined Argentinian star Lionel Messi (with 124 internationals) at the coveted 21st position in the all-time list of goal scorers. Chhetri scored twice, taking his tally to 64 over the weekend and making him the second highest international goal-scorer among active players. The news comes right before the 2018 FIFA World Cup on June 14 in Moscow, and sent the social media into a spin, with football fans, which included some of Bollywood’s big names, lauding Chhetri for the growth of the sport in the country. Among them was filmmaker Shoojit Sircar who had earlier pleaded for fellow Indians to follow the 33-year-old-footballer and the Indian Super League.

“Football has made me the person I am today,” admits Shoojit who is flying to Russia to catch the action live, as Argentina take on Iceland on June 16 and Germany lock horns with Mexico the following day. His wife Jhuma, daughters, Ananya and Koyna, and his Vicky Donor, Pink and October co-producer Ronnie Lahiri will be with him on this football pilgrimage. “I’m excited about watching the World Cup for the first time with my family. My daughters are football fanatics like me and Jhuma has never watched a match in a stadium so it’ll be a novel experience for her.”

Shoojit will return to Russia in the first week of July for the quarter-finals and semi-finals and is most excited to watch his all-time favourite player, Messi, dazzle on the field. The Germany-Mexico match too is a big draw for him and he admits he’ll be rooting for four teams this year — Brazil, Argentina, Belgium and Spain.

With actors like Ranveer Singh promoting a football league and Ranbir Kapoor buying himself a local football team while playing the sport every weekend in Bandra, Shoojit is confident that India will be playing in the big arena in the near future. “I was pleasantly surprised to find that so many young actors follow football as I had assumed that the film frat was hooked on cricket,” acknowledges the producer-director who frequently plays for Bunty Walia and Abhishek Bachchan’s All Star Football Club (ASFC).

He was in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup too and though he refers to football as a “poor man’s sport” because anyone can play it anywhere, his love affair with it started way back in 1974-’75 when his family moved to Bengal from Delhi. “There were a lot of boys of my age and we’d get together to play football, irrespective of our backgrounds. Watching the World Cup every four years was a childhood dream that I’m living out now that I’ve earned a bit of money. When I played in local tournaments as a young boy, I never thought I’d ever be able to watch a World Cup, forget multiple World Cups,” he says, sighing over the fact that he had to miss the 2014 World Cup in Brazil because he was on a deadline with Piku. “The World Cup season is like a carnival for football fans. The game teaches you everything about unity, patience, discipline and the importance of teamwork. All great ideas related to scripting and filmmaking come to me when I am on the field with a ball. Football will always be my first love.”

Madhureeta Mukherjee (BOMBAY TIMES; April 12, 2018)

His movies are like soul food. They evoke emotions and memories and keep the flavour real, subtle and simple. Yet, it fills you up. It’s cinema that’s good for your heart, good for your soul. Filmmaker Shoojit Sircar is skilled at creating characters that are real (even taming the superstardom of actors to fit into his realistic world) and stories that are closer to home.

Piku was one such memorable film and character, so real and relatable that its effect lingered on. He explains, “I try to tell simple, everyday life stories and I like to live my life that way too.” In his films, the actors enact their parts beautifully, but the story always remains the hero. And he takes pride in that, just the way he takes pride, unabashedly, in letting the influence of Satyajit Ray’s work seep into his movies. He passionately talks about his upcoming film, October, which he says is written like poetry and is drawn from his personal experience. Read on…

Your films explore romance and relationships between people with a sense of reality, which is refreshing. Even the relationship that you portrayed between a father and daughter in Piku is not commonly seen in our movies. October seems to be on a similar path of unconventional relationships…
The backdrop of the film is related to my personal experience. I feel that in any relationship, there is one factor that binds two people, though there could be many ways of looking at it. Only two people who share the relationship will know if they love each other. Sometimes, it is selfless and unconditional, but there is an energy that flows between them. This film explores that. I am not an expert on love, but I know that everything can’t be defined in love. October is a very human story between a boy and a girl, but something like this can happen between any two people.

Is it true that you were certain about casting Varun Dhawan the moment you met him?
Varun was cast accidentally. In fact, he was not on my radar at all and he can’t be. We are poles apart, even with the kind of cinema that we do. I wanted a fresh cast for this film. The planning of October had started before we made Pink (he had creatively supervised the film). Varun and I were thinking of catching up for quite some time, but a year had passed and it didn’t happen. One day, when I was about to leave for Kolkata, he called and said that he wanted to meet me. I told him to come over and he responded saying that he had just woken up and was dressed shabbily. I told him that was hardly a problem and I didn’t care about it. I have not seen any of his films, just some glimpses here and there. So, I had a different perception of him. When I met him for the first time, I thought, he would have the swag of a Bollywood star, but he didn’t. When we chatted for some time over chai, I looked into his eyes and saw that there was still some innocence left. He was not the Varun that I was aware of. He was behaving just like my character (in October); he was clumsy, he had no inhibitions and he even spilled the cup of chai. A week later, I called him again as I was unable to get him out of my head. With just a one-line narration of the story, he agreed to do the part, I think that is quite brave. He has this greed for acting and I love the way he surrendered to the part. I didn’t expect a successful and commercial hero like him to come into my world of cinema.

In your films, the story is always the hero. From sperm donation to constipation, the audience remembers the subject as fondly as the characters. It seems like a lot of your ideas come from personal experiences, and observations from everyday life. Do you have any other inspiration?
My wife Jhuma is a huge inspiration for me. The crux of Piku… parents ko zinda rakhna padta hai, is something that she had said to me at the point when she was taking care of her mother. My stories are a reflection of society and people. I also have a brilliant writer like Juhi Chaturvedi, who views life in a way that everyone can relate to. I think October is written like poetry. The spine of any film is the writer. Shooting a film is not tough, writing it is what consumes more time and takes more out of me. I shot this film in 37 days and after the edit, I thought I could have shot more.

As a storyteller who doesn’t give in to the demands and trappings of Bollywood blockbusters, do you find it difficult to pitch your ideas to producers and studios?
I have stopped selling the concept of my films to producers since the last few outings; I go ahead and make the film on my own. No one had a clue about what I was doing with Piku (starring Deepika Padukone, Amitabh Bachchan and Irrfan), they just had a basic idea. I showed the film to people only after shooting it. If someone interferes with my work, I pull out of it and I don’t associate with them. I believe that if someone does not have any respect for my work or they don’t trust what I will do with it, there is no point trying to sell them an idea. During Pink, I was so angry that I went to Ronnie (Lahiri), who has produced all my films and told him that I will make this at any cost, so decide how you want to do it. It is difficult to pitch my ideas to someone else, and then be answerable to them, that too, on commercial grounds.

So, if someone advised you to add a song to make your film more saleable, would you do it?
I won’t add it to the film, at best, I will put the song in the credit roll and leave it there (laughs).

Most of your films like Vicky Donor and Piku have worked well, even a film like Pink, which was backed by you, left a solid impression. Hence, you are able to tell the stories that you want to. So, while you have a deep understanding of your art, I am assuming that you are adept at managing the commerce of filmmaking, too?
I only understand the money that has been entrusted to me as a director. Let me tell you… my films are so cheap that it doesn’t matter. The cost of production is low, but in terms of canvas and presentation, there is no compromise. My background is theatre, and theatre usually grounds you and makes you work with bare minimum resources. I try to tell simple, everyday-life stories and I like to live my life that way, too. I collaborate with great cinematographers and technicians and I invest in them. If your excel sheet is right before the film, you can’t go too wrong with the dynamics of it. I know the kind of returns my producers will get.

Today, the lines between what we call commercial and offbeat, or mainstream and niche, is blurring. If the audience likes something that is out there, they will a find a way to watch it, irrespective of the genre or the star cast. Movie lovers are as greedy for good stories as actors are for good roles…
Yes, the word parallel cinema came from the time when filmmakers like Shyam Benegal, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha were making films. The problem was that they could exhibit their films only in a few theatres, so their kind of cinema ended up becoming niche films. Now, the same film can release in 1,500 screens across the city, and given the accessibility and exhibition of these films, they reach out to a wider audience. I think people always had an appetite for such cinema, but now, they have access to it. That’s why they are reacting so actively to all kinds of films. Today, potboilers are working, but along with that, there is ample space for the kind of films I make, too. There will always be a struggle to release smaller films, but that is also because nowadays, there are too many films releasing and on some Fridays, there is almost a traffic jam at the screens.

Your films always give the audience something to takeaway, or something to ponder over long after they have watched the movie. Is it a conscious choice and effort?
I do think that cinema can help bring about a social change, also because it is something that becomes a part of our conversation in our everyday lives. Of course, for us it is firstly a platform to tell stories, not just talk about social change. I believe that every story has some kind of moral value, otherwise what is a story? And what is the purpose? I remember that our class teacher would tell stories in school and then ask us, ‘What is the moral of the story?’ Hence, if there is no moral in the story, there is no story. My focus is to tell a good story and make the audience sit quietly and watch the film. Today, people have so many other things to do in life, and they remember all their to-do lists while sitting in the theatre. Ghar pe kya ho raha hai, kya nahi ho raha hai, all these thoughts occur while watching a film (laughs). As a filmmaker, if you don’t get the right audience, then you have had it. It can be very disturbing.

Given the current scenario of unofficial censorship by fringe elements and other bodies, do you sense a creative threat for filmmakers and artistes? You made a film like Madras Cafe (2013) and luckily got away with it. Do filmmakers really have the kind of democracy that they deserve? Their views expressed on various platforms (including social media) are also often branded as national or anti-national...
When I was making Madras Cafe, I got away with it because I didn’t name anyone. The Censor Board was fine with it, but there were fringe elements that stopped the film. Now, that’s not a democratic way of telling a filmmaker what he can’t do. The democratic way of dealing with filmmakers is to debate, sit across the table and talk about the issue. The democratic way is to appeal to government bodies. Vandalising a theatre and scaring film lovers from watching what they like to, just because you don’t want to watch it, is not a democratic way of dealing with the problem. By doing that, we are harming our Constitution. I always say that filmmakers are not irresponsible citizens. You can’t take us for granted and say that yeh toh film ke log hain. We are also participating in building our country. We are contributing to the country socially, economically and we are responsible, law-abiding citizens. I wouldn’t like to comment on nationalism or anti-nationals, because it is quite an abused term. I consider myself a nationalist and a liberal.

Tell us about your taste as a movie lover?
Every week, I ensure that I watch one of Satyajit Ray’s films, even though I have lost count of the number of times I have seen them. Ray’s films are my Bible and my inspiration. I openly say that all characters in my films are influenced by his films and stories. I also watch a lot of world cinema that inspires me.

Which are the last three Hindi films that you have seen in recent times?
Hmmm (after a lot of thought)… I saw Masaan and I really liked it. Balki asked me to watch Pad Man, so I saw that. And I recently watched Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin.

Well, Do Bigha Zamin (1953) is far from recent and it seems like you don’t really watch too many Bollywood films...
(Smiles) I like watching old films and there are some good films being made across the world, so I catch up on them. When I am not working, I play football and usually, when I am writing a film, I don’t like being distracted by anything else.