Anurag Kashyap is a happy man these days. His film, ‘That Girl in Yellow Boots’, was, at one point of time, supposed to be produced by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Films. But due to reasons he refuses to reveal, he backed out of the deal.
From then on, he has put his and all of his friends’ and family’s every single penny into making this film. “I have not only borrowed money from the whole world, but all that I had has gone into making this film,” says Anurag Kashyap, the film’s director, who is currently in Toronto creating a market for his film. “There were moments when we didn’t have money to work any further. We had to wait for seven months for funds to arrive.”
The red carpet was rolled out for Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and his cast for the premiere of his movie ‘That Girl in Yellow Boots’ at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
And the audience's response was “incredible”. And if viewers’ reaction to this provocative thriller over the weekend is anything to go by, ‘That Girl in Yellow Boots’ is the most well received Indian film at this year’s festival.
“The audience reaction here and in Venice has been incredible. I never expected that the film will evoke such a strong response and reaction,” said Kashyap.
After ‘Dev D’, ‘That Girl in Yellow Boots’ seals Kashyap’s reputation as one of the leaders of the independent film movement in India that is challenging conventional cinema by portraying social reality as it is.
Set in Pune and Mumbai, ‘That Girl in Yellow Boots’ is the moving story of the travails of a white-skinned foreign girl named Ruth who comes to India in search of her Bengali father who was a photographer. Playing the role of Ruth, Kashyap’s partner Kalki Koechlin — born to French parents in India — has turned in yet another stellar performance after her role as Chandramukhi in Kashyap’s ‘Dev D’.
The winner of the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress in ‘Dev D’ and fluent in Hindi, Kalki — as Ruth — plunges into the maze of complex Indian milieu with the single-minded goal of finding her father. She bribes bureaucrats to get her tourist visa extended, learns parlour massage to service men in the back alleys and supports a useless, drug-addicted boyfriend even as underworld sharks eye this fair-skinned girl. Sexually explicit dialogues flow freely in this film which has been rated ‘adult’ by the censors.