Kaushik: I have a lot of stories to tell and hence, I make films

Nation Award-winning Kaushik Ganguly’s Kaberi Antardhan is all set to be released on January 20. Billed as a love story-cum-thriller, the film is set in the backdrop of the Emergency period of 1975 during the Naxalite movement. While Kaushik plays an important character, the film also features Prosenjit Chatterjee, Churni Ganguly, Ambarish Bhattacharya, and others.

Kaushik has maintained that he is a storyteller. However, he has always stayed away from the trend that the Bengali film industry chose to follow. He was not seen taking up a thriller or a whodunit project when Byomkesh or Feluda was trending. “It is futile and silly to predict what people want. Those who think they know what people really want and try to make films accordingly are either crazy or imbeciles. You can never predict audiences’ minds. Raj Kapoor famously said, ‘Take a risk and risk a take’,” said the director.

Kaberi Antardhan is Kaushik’s 28th film. “I love to tell stories and each of my stories is different from the others. Kaberi Antardhan is different from Lokkhi Chele. There will be no similarities between Ardhangini and Palan,” he said. Talking about following the bandwagon, he said, “I never predicted what my viewers want. If I asked Babuda (Sandip Ray) to give me the rights to a Feluda novel, he wouldn’t have said no. I never felt the urge. I never wanted to make biopics either. Perhaps I am not comfortable making a biopic. A biopic on BR Ambedkar may stop me from telling a story of an individual who suffered due to certain aspects of the constitution of India. At the same time, someone may feel the urge to make a biopic on Ambedkar in today’s time. I have full respect for them.” 

Elaborating further he said that in the case of Kaberi Antardhan, he chose to tell a love story-cum-suspense thriller in the backdrop of the Emergency and Naxal movement. “Someone may just make a film on the Naxal movement and that would be their choice. I like to tell stories. Many people, who like to tell stories, write books. I make films,” he said.

Kaushik further said that stories come to him out of nowhere. “Shabdo, Nagarkirtan, Chotoder Chobi and so on all are stories of simple people. All these elements, including foley artistes, transgender people, or dwarfs have been there in front of us for years. Nobody thought to make a film out of these lives. I did. Our audiences want such stories. But what do we do? We try to predict what they want and end up making designed products. We kept on making detective thrillers till the time the viewers are frustrated. When we started remaking South Indian films, we overdid that also,” he said.