Tannishtha’s film about men facing patriarchy

Tannishtha Chatterjee says she did not want Roam Rome Mein, her directorial debut, to be an obvious film about a brother searching for his missing sister and decided to add a touch of surrealism to the story. The film revolves around Reena, played by Tannishtha, who goes to Rome to find her freedom from strict patriarchal father. When she goes missing, her brother Raj (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), undergoes his journey of awakening as he goes to find her and learns about Reena’s life as well as his own. The actor said the germ of the idea came from her own experience when she was in Rome. “I went to a money exchange place and there was an old man who invited me home. It was a very weird dinner and at 9.30 pm, he looked at me and said ‘it’s time for you to leave!’ He gave me a total lowdown on the history of feminism, Renaissance, Italy, Venice. Ten days later, when I went back to the place, I couldn’t find it. The shopkeeper next to it told me that for hundreds of years there was nothing but a wall! Till date I don’t know what that was. My father says I was hallucinating, I might’ve made a mistake. But I am sure I went back there and I couldn’t find it, I just saw a wall,” she said.

The director said she narrated this story to Nawazuddin, who was working with her in Lion, and he encouraged her to build up on the premise. Tannishtha said she eventually found the crux of the story, of a girl rebelling and men coming face-to-face with patriarchy, and decided to add elements of surrealism to the narrative. “Unless I went a little surreal, I couldn’t get into the psychological aspect of the character. That was my main idea. It’s not a search film because that’s an obvious layer. It’s mainly how he’s feeling, his regret, his desire to change. He doesn’t know what to believe, what’s deja vu, what’s real and what’s a dream. It’s the trouble he’s going through,” she added. —PTI