Four years after it was made and went around the festival circuit, young film maker Rajshree Ojha’s English multi-starrer Chaurahen is finally up for release marking the Indian cinema debut of Charlie Chaplin’s grand daughter Kiera.
Despite its delayed release this month, Ojha hopes that the film - which has an ensemble cast of Soha Ali Khan, Ankur Khanna, Victor Banerjee, Roopa Ganguly, Zeenat Aman, Shayan Munshi besides Kiera Chaplin — will connect with the audience.
The film holds its relevance even after four years as “the situation, about love and how people move on in life, has not changed overtime,” Ojha says.
Insisting that a director should not necessarily be stuck with films of one genre, Ojha says that the story line was entirely different from her other film Aisha based on Jane Austen’s Emma.
The film, made after Chaurahen, was more into a romantic comic mould unlike this film which consists four separate stories set in three different metros.
Ojha was also very appreciative of the role of Kiera, cast as Lea, a girl who arrives in Kolkata, one of the three cities, to find her moorings and hopes the 29-year-old model-turned-actress would get more offers after Chaurahen.
“She (Kiera) saw my first small film.
She said four ingredients — my first short film, me, the script of Chaurahen and the chance to visit Kolkata and India — prompted her to act in the film and she did not charge a single penny,” Ojha adds.