Madhur Bhandarkar is known for films like Fashion, Page 3, and Traffic Signal. Rather than making large-than-life fantasy films, he focuses on keeping his movies in real space. The National award-winning filmmaker is now gearing up for his upcoming movie India Lockdown. The film mirrors the reality of Indian Society when the lockdown took place in 2020.
Lockdown was a tough time for everyone but filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar managed to make 2 movies during that namely. He worked on Babli Bouncer which was released on 23rd September and India Lockdown set to premiere on December 2. In a recent interview with India Today, the director spoke of his upcoming project.
He said, “I am a huge film buff so during lockdown, I mostly binge-watched a lot. I also made two films during that time – Babli Bouncer and India Lockdown. I connected with a lot of people. Both the lockdowns were a different experience for me. India Lockdown was shot during the latter part of the lockdown. It was great to depict on screen what we really saw and to derive from society what turmoil they went through.”
He continued, “Me and the writers did all the research. We wrote the film in the lockdown itself. During that time, there were so many stories going around globally, and we were wondering how to put everything together. There were an enormous amount of information out there, and we had to cut it short and make a film out of it. It wasn’t easy, and we didn’t even have a big budget, so it had to be compact.”
He further added, “We picked up some great stories and wrote three drafts. We started from 12 stories and zeroed down to four stories. After that we approached the actors who said yes immediately, and then we rolled the film. Every story has a different location. Prateik and Sai’s scenes were shot outdoors since we had to show the migrant workers’ journey. We shot in Pune where it was very sunny and very cold too. It was a very contrast weather.”
Madhur Bhandarkar’s India Lockdown will depict the story of the lockdown that took place in India in 2020 due to the global pandemic Covid 19. Starring Prateik Babbar the film will stream on Zee5 from 2nd December.
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