Ghaywan’s two cents

— Neeraj Ghaywan, filmmaker

Director Neeraj

Ghaywan (right), whose recent film starring Richa Chadda has tugged on quite a few heartstrings, wants to make films “that touch the audience on a personal level”.

Ghaywan, who won two awards for the film at the Cannes International film festival this year, says, “I have been conditioned that way, I guess. When I was a kid, I’d watch films on Doordarshan. The channel mostly played Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal films. I didn’t grow up on Amitabh Bachchan films. It’s not that I was born with a special talent to watch films with realism in them, but I had no other option but to watch what my three elder sisters were watching (laughs),” he says.

“Apart from Ray and Benegal, I am a big fan of Shekhar Kapur’s work as well. Then, internationally I admire the Belgian filmmaker duo, Dardenne brothers, and the Austrian director Michael Haneke. Their films always talk about the moral or existential problems that the working class faces. They don’t go much into the socio-political background. That’s the kind of cinema that appeals to me, and those are the kind of stories I want to tell through my films,” he adds.

The filmmaker, who served as the assistant director to Anurag Kashyap’s popular film, Gangs Of Wasseypur, also insists on shooting in real locations, and rarely goes for an artificially-created shooting set. “I always like to shoot in a real location. You can have the best production designer, the best location designer, who will curate the best sets for a director. But even with that, these sets can’t recreate the beauty of a real place,” he says.

I like films that talk about moral issues that middle class faces. That’s the kind of cinema I like