Mumbai, Oct 14 Filmmaker Kiran Rao, whose directorial ‘Laapataa Ladies’ bagged 13 Filmfare Awards, is over the moon. Celebrating the success of her film, Kiran spoke with IANS in the Bandra West area of Mumbai on Tuesday.
The film presents an offbeat narrative. It came at a time when people in metro cities or big cities generally preferred action or drama or over the top films, tentpole films. But Kiran had the conviction that this is the story she wanted and told it the way she wanted without making any compromises or making any accommodations from the commercial point of view.
Ask her what were some of the brave decisions she made keeping aside all the noise that the market forces tend to influence you with, and she said, “So, one of the big decisions I think that is quite brave and considered pretty disruptive in the market today is to cast newcomers. Most films rely on what a big stars, and crowd pullers in terms of the box-office. And we really felt that we should cast for the role, we should cast to make the film feel authentic, and I had the full support of Aamir Khan in this.
Furnishing the reason behind the same, she told IANS, “This is the kind of story that's very naturally dramatic and you need to immerse yourself in that world because it's something quite unusual happening, it's outrageous. And you'll only believe it if those characters are very believable. So, casting for new talent was one of our big decisions and I give full credit to Aamir for this, Aamir Khan, the producer”.
She further mentioned, “Some of the other challenges and some of the other big decisions were shooting on location. We were actually making this film during Covid-19 which honestly was not the best time to shoot because there were many restrictions, we had a lot of background actors, we were shooting on real railway stations with live trains passing us all the time”.
“So these were some of the big challenges. One of the later bigger challenges was releasing in cinemas. A film like ours with no stars, which is not an action film, not a tentpole film, traditionally would just now, in this market, go straight to OTT. And I think the conviction of our producer partners was that this film is going to do well in cinemas. Later, OTT also gave it a push and helped it reach a wider audience”. She added.
Presented by Jio Studios, 'Laapataa Ladies' is directed by Kiran Rao and produced by Aamir Khan and Jyoti Deshpande. The film has been made under the banner of Aamir Khan Productions and Kindling Productions.
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