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Friday, 02nd May 2014, 01:30 PM IST Kanu Behl’s directorial debut project,'Titli', has been officially selected for the Cannes Film festival this year. 'Titli' is the first and the only Indian film to be selected in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes film festival.
'Titli', a story of a family set in Delhi’s dystopian underbelly, is the directorial debut film of Kanu Behl and has been produced by Dibakar Banerjee along with Yashraj Films. This is the first time that Dibakar has produced a film that he hasn’t directed.
Behl says, “I was writing something else earlier and Dibakar was not very happy with it. So I took six months off to assess what I really wanted to write. I looked inward and thought about what could be my most honest expression of a story; something personal, something I am angry about… something I want to scream out loud about. In 2011, I was ready with the story and soon I started working on its draft. Once I was convinced with my work, I approached Dibakar. He was excited and he said that this needs to be made right now.” He continues to say, he found the ideal producer in Banerjee, “He not only protected me from the other commercial aspects of the film, but also believed in the script so much so that he would bring me back on track whenever I lost my way.”
Dibakar, however, says he was most reluctant to produce a film other than his own. “I have always tried running away from this production business. I envy people like Anurag Kashyap who can invest their energy like that. Kanu insisted that I should produce his film,but his earlier script didn’t work for me. When he came back with the script of ‘Titli’, it was startling and original. I was completely sold on the script and Kanu was pretty clever in wanting me to produce the film. Then when the script went for the Script Lab, it was one of the hottest properties there. There were quite a few producers who were interested in taking it up. But I must say that by producing this film, I have grown as a filmmaker. It was a mutually rewarding process,” he says. |