Nikkhil Advani prefers to keep his films close to reality
Nikkhil Advani’s upcoming directorial, Batla House, is an action thriller that promises to be a gut-wrenching film. Inspired by one of India’s most controversial encounters, between Delhi Police and suspected terrorists, which took place in September 2008, the film’s characters, played by John Abraham, Ravi Kishen and Mrunal Thakur among others, are closely inspired by real people.
Nikkhil and action director Amin Khatib wanted to keep
the action sequences as real as possible. Hence, they didn’t use choreographed action, but rather spontaneous sequences that were suitable to the script. Keeping in mind the significance of the encounter scenes, Nikkhil instructed the cast to keep it as authentic as they can.
Talking about the same, Nikkhil says, “It was essential for the audience to relive the stress and trauma of the main players. During my interaction with the police officers, I understood that even they had experienced a hundred different thoughts before pulling the trigger, it was essential to capture that.”
“The boys involved in the encounter needed to look like novices. Are they terrorists or are they students is a key question that needs to be answered in the film. How could they then have known how to fire a weapon? Keeping all that in mind we chose not to choreograph, but merely plot the areas that needed to be covered by the players. I instructed them that they needed to get to a point at the end of the sequence. How to get there was up to them. And then we opened fire,” he shares.
Directed by Nikkhil Advani, Batla House is produced by Bhushan Kumar, Divya Khosla Kumar, Krishan Kumar (T-Series), Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani (Emmay Entertainment), John Abraham (JA Entertainment) and Sandeep Leyzell (Bake My Cake Films), and will release on August 15.