CHENNAI : Khayam Khan made his directorial debut with the Indo-British sports drama, A Game of Two Halves (AGOTH). The film recently had a limited theatrical release in India. A Game of Two Halves revolves around Sanjay (Saaj Raja) a young British-Indian who comes to India to teach football to underprivileged kids. Why football specifically? Khayam replies, “Just like In football, there are two halves in our lives too — how you start it, and how you end it. Sanjay’s journey too is in two halves, where the second half shows how he finds his true meaning. Through my film, I wanted to talk about how the two halves matter, the journey matters.”
After spending 30-odd years in the UK, studying and later working at a regular IT job, when Khayam decided to make a feature film, he turned to his family for funding and financial help. “I just asked them to trust me. That’s how it worked,” he says. Khayam relied on trust again when it came to the production of his film. “For AGOTH, I didn’t have much knowledge of framing. I knew my story, my emotion, and my cinematographer would suggest how to frame the scene,” says Khayam.
Apart from trusting his crew, Khayam also knew he could trust Hyderabad, the city he grew up in — which is where AGOTH is primarily set in. I wanted to make something with a Hyderabad connection because I understand the city, I know how it works.” Khayam also elaborates on the many troubles he faced while finding a distributor for his film, “My lead stars, Harish Khanna (12th Fail), is not well known in the UK, while Saaj Raja is not popular in the Indian market.” So to find a distributor, Khayam would take 2 days off his job to connect with people. “That’s how Platoon One Films, a distribution firm in Mumbai, eventually picked it up. It took over 5 years to be made,” signs off Khayam.