Odia filmmakers Avinash Nanda and Abhimanyu Mishra will be releasing their first Hindi movie Rangdari soon. Based on the life of a gangster turned politician of Uttar Pradesh, the duo is busy finetuning the post-production works. While Abhimanyu has handled the creative part of the movie, Avinash looked into the technical details. In an interview with Diana Sahu, one of the filmmakers, Avinash, speaks about the making of the film.
Tell us something about Rangdari?
The movie is based on the life and times of a popular gangster-turned politician of Uttar Pradesh. The gangster is rather famous as the Robinhood of his area as the rangdari, meaning batti in Odia, that he collects from tycoons is spent on development works for the poor. I went to personally meet the gangster, who is at present serving sentence in a jail, before the project was started. He was okay with the idea, but asked us not to use his name anywhere in the movie or promotional events.
Rangdari is meant for those in the front rows of a cinema theatre, the rickshawwallas, the labourers who struggle throughout the day and buy a Rs 10 ticket to watch a movie. They would actually relate to the movie.
Idea behind Rangdari?
There was no particular idea behind this movie. We were looking for interesting scripts and when our writer Iqram Akthar came to us with the story idea, we loved it at the first hearing. We wanted to showcase the other side of the mafia don - about the good work that he did before he was jailed.
Why did you select Gaurav Chopra as the lead?
The audition session for this role was taken for 20 days and we had even approached actors like Irfan Khan and K K Menon. Incidentally, Gaurav fitted into the character like no one else. His height, voice, body language and personality was absolutely perfect.
Who else feature in Rangdari?
Besides Gaurav, we have actors like Alankrita, Kajal, Shakti Kapoor, Kiran Kumar, Aditya Pancholi, Aman Verma, Amitab Dayal, Ali Quli Mirza, Ehsaan Khan, Raju Mawani, Mustak Khan, Azhar Mirza and Mustak Khan as the supporting characters.
What was your most memorable moment in the film?
Every moment was memorable due to the excellent acting skills of Gaurav. During the filming, I actually felt that the gangster was standing beside me or interacting with me. Throughout the shooting period, Gaurav spoke and behaved the way the gangster did. In fact, after the shooting was over, Gaurav told me that it took him five days to come out of the character.
Where was the movie shot?
Rangdari has been entirely shot at Salempur, 35 km from Lucknow. The shooting was complete in 32 days. Only last week, we completed shooting an item song celebrating the birthday of the protagonist. A huge set of a dhaba was created at the Salempur House, near Barabanki, Lucknow. The dance sequence had been choreographed by B H Tarun Kumar who has done more than 100 Bollywood movies with the music given by Lalit Pandit of the ‘Munni Badnaam Hui’ fame. Rangdari is now in post-production stage.
When is the film releasing?
We are hopeful of releasing the movie by August 15.
What are your next ventures?
I have been fortunate enough to receive three projects with big banners after producers saw the initial promos of this movie. I cannot reveal the names of production houses now, but work on the projects will begin soon.