Gyanendra Tripathi had umpteen questions when he first read the script of Barah By Barah, his upcoming film which narrates the story of a death photographer based in Varanasi.

“He clicks pictures of dead bodies that are brought for cremation. I wondered what his outlook on life would be, and if there was a spiritual element linked to this job. These questions excited me,” says the actor, days ahead of the film’s theatrical release following a two-year-long festival run.

To step into his character for the project, which marks director Gaurav Madan’s feature debut, Tripathi roamed the streets of Varanasi, interacting with locals and observing cremations.

“I reached Varanasi a week before the shoot began. Most of the filming happened at real locations. The pyres that you would see in the film are real. So, it was important that my body language was appropriate. I would sit on a ghat, and see multiple dead bodies being brought in, one after the other. People would harbour different emotions—some would also come with band baaja, and celebrate it. I also worked on the dialect, and kept an eye on how locals greet each other,” he says.

Up next in his kitty is Reema Kagti’s Superman Of Malegaon, also starring Adarsh Gourav and Vineet Kumar. “Reema’s set was driven by women. The atmosphere was completely different. Nobody was seen screaming, shouting, or using cuss words. Everything was well planned.”

Kagti’s directorial venture has been penned by Varun Grover.

In a career spanning over a decade, Adarsh Gourav has observed a difference between male and female directors in terms of how they approach a character. The actor, who’ll be seen in Reema Kagti’s next directorial Superman Of Malegaon, says, “I can’t really say if a female vision is better for the story, but it definitely brings a certain sense of vulnerability to the character. When men write male characters, they write on the basis of their experiences. It is more like a first-person experience. So, [as a writer] you sometimes tend to overlook certain things or make things pretty heroic.”

The 29-year-old adds that a male character directed by a woman is likely to have a more accurate representation: “When women write characters for men, they see it as an outsider. Also, women are more emotionally intelligent and the quality reflects in the male characters they write. I find their characters interesting and vulnerable, and more complete compared to ones written by men.”

The experience of working with Kagti was amazing, says Gourav. The actor, in fact, stayed in Malegaon (Maharashtra) for a few weeks before the film’s shoot started. “Reema is phenomenal. Her energy is something else. The way she leads the team... each department gets the freedom to voice their opinions,” he ends.

What can you do with Rs 50,000? If you’re Sheikh Nasir of Malegaon, you can mount a spoof film and make a few lakhs off it. Since 2002, Nasir has been a pioneer in creating Malegaon’s own film industry that thrives on making spoofs of classic Hindi films. Such has been the popularity of these spoofs—from Malegaon Ke Sholay to Malegaon Ke Karan Arjun, from Malegaon Ka Don to Malegaon Ka Superman— that they have earned fans in Anurag Kashyap and Zoya Akhtar. The latest admirer is Adarsh Gourav, who brings Nasir’s real-life story to screen with Superman Of Malegaon.

Fronting director Reema Kagti’s movie was a learning experience for the actor as he understood the town’s unique approach to filmmaking. “While the films may be different, they have cracked the code with a solid business model, reaping substantial profits,” says Gourav, referring to how Nasir, in the early 2000s, would make these short films with the locals headlining them and a motley local crew helping him shoot them. They would then be played in the tiny theatres across Malegaon and the surrounding region of Khandesh.

The advent of YouTube in the late 2000s led to a surge in local filmmakers establishing their own channels. Today, Mollywood—as the industry is called—boasts numerous popular channels, producing 10- to 15-minute comedy sketches, garnering millions of views. Gourav adds that these films stand out for their unique brand of humour that reflects the goings-on of the town.

“Each project is a labour of love. Almost all their films make money, and that [is because] the industry has mastered the art of delivering a genre of cinema that is truly their own.”