Films should speak for themselves, says Aamir’s director

F ilmmaker Raj Kumar Gupta likes his films talk for themselves. Gupta, who is credited with critically acclaimed and commercially successful ventures like Aamir and No One Killed Jessica, is in Lucknow to shoot for Ajay Devgn and Illena D’Cruze starrer Raid. HT City catches up with him. What’s your kind of film?

I believe that the film should speak for itself than me talking about it. Once the film is released everybody gets to know what it is all about. As a storyteller, Aamir gave me that confidence as it was critically and commercially successful despite being my debut film made with a very low budget and without big stars. Jessica’s success strengthened my belief that story should speak for itself and relate to audience. Your films are mostly based on true incidents? Aamir was inspired from real life incidents faced by the country at that time. No One Killed Jessica again was inspired by true incident which needed to be told. Similarly, Raid too is inspired by real incidents that took place during 1980s but are relevant even today. We do put some fiction in it to make it entertaining but focus is on to connect it with the audiences. Do we see you making multistarrer entertainers like Golmaal and Judwaa? I am happy making my kind of cinema. Everyone knows what one wants to make. We have audience for all type of cinema. The same audience appreciates Judwaa and on the same time Raid is being made. So it’s a good thing that different people make different kind of cinema. Tell us about your journey?

I come from a small town Hazaribagh (now Jharkhand, earlier Bihar). I went to Delhi University for BCom where I started writing a bit. That was my first step towards creative field. After post-graduation, I went to Mumbai where I started assisting in films (1999). Being from a small town, middle-class without any film background the journey was tough. Parents wanted me to take up a secured government job but I did not wanted that. I survived by writing and then wrote few scripts and started pitching them to filmmakers. Aamir (2008) was liked by a producer and that is how I became writer-director. You also wrote and directed Ghanchakar and Jessica but did not write Raid? This film’s story is by Pink writer Ritesh Shah. He is a good friend and a great writer. With Raid, I got a chance to collaborate with him, producer Kumar Mangat and Ajay Devgn. It’s a story which needs to be told. I am very happy that we all came together on board for such a project. Any connections with Lucknow? I came to the city just few months back when we decided to make the film.

And she since then I had multiple visits to the city before the shoot began. It has been over two months of shoot in Lucknow we will be completing the schedule on Tuesday. I have started feeling like home here and feel sad that after a day or two we will leave Lucknow. The shoot has been wonderful and people cooperated a lot. I hope to come back here again to shoot for another project.

HT PHOTO Director Raj Kumar Gupta during the shoot of Raid in Lucknow on Monday.