Dibakar Banerjee returns

We’ve all missed seeing the Dibakar Banerjee magic on screen ever since the filmmaker went on a self-imposed break after the box office failure of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! Now, after three years, Banerjee has resurfaced with a segment in Lust Stories on Netflix as well as a feature film with Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor titled Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, which will be released in 2019.

His films Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and Love Sex Aur Dhokha have been described as pathbreaking. Yet, why did he choose to stay away for three years? He explains, “It was a voluntary withdrawal. I went through a long period of churning and introspection. Also, my second daughter was born and I wanted to be there constantly. So this break has been rewarding.”

He feels he has gotten a new beginning with Lust Stories and Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar. “No two films of mine are similar. I make sure of that. So it’s like putting extra pressure on myself each time,” he says.

“When I started making Sandeep Aur Pinky..., everything — from the cast to the plot and the locations — was completely new to me,” he says, describing it as a “heist drama in the Bonnie & Clyde space with a desi contemporary urban tadka”.

He can’t wait for the release. “We would have released the film this year. But then it got delayed by a month.  Because of this, we lost our release date. Now there are too many big films for the rest of the year, so we have to wait for 2019,” he says.

Doing a segment of Lust Stories gave him a sense of deja vu. He had earlier done an anthology film with the same producer (Ashi Dua) and the same co-directors — Anurag Kashyap, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar.

However, the theme and presentation are completely new. “This time we are exploring a new world of emotions. I also got to work with the wonderful Manisha Koirala for the first time,” he says.

He concludes by saying, “One makes the film one wants to. What happens to it thereafter is strictly not in the director’s hands.”