Bollywood Diaries goes to Asia’s largest red light district

Bollywood Diaries, KD Satyam’s film that deals with flesh trade was shot at Sonagachi in Kolkata — Asia’s largest red light district. Raima Sen’s character in the film plays a sex worker who aspires to be an actress one day.

Says the director who earlier wrote the highly acclaimed children’s film Gattu, “Sonagachi is a very difficult place to shoot since there are groups of local goons who do not entertain such activities. We had to do guerrilla shoot inspite of having all the necessary permissions in place.”

Ask him why he chose to shoot the film in a place that makes for a such a risky location and the director says, “Raima’s character in the film is that of a sex worker from Kolkata. I had seen a documentary film based on the lives of sex workers over there. There are hundreds of multi-story buildings that house brothels inside them. We knew that we had to shoot the entire film at real locations so for Raima’s part, Sonagachi was the most appropriate place we could find. We were once caught shooting and few people from my crew were beaten up as well. But we fortunately managed to finish our shoot nevertheless.”

The film also stars Ashish Vidyarthi, Karuna Pandey and Vineet Singh along with debutant Salim Diwan. The film is slated to release on 26 February.