Kolkata: 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 told PTI.
Insisting that a director should not necessarily be stuck with films of one genre, Ojha said 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 said.
“Everybody has supported me to complete the movie,” she said.
About the time gap reflected on the look of the cast in the film, Ojha said, “Instead, I have found the looks of Soha, Rupa and others have not changed much in all those years and the screen look will tally with what we see of them now.” Soha said what struck her most in Chaurahen was the way in which the film reflected the different shades of life, and she portrayed a confident girl who knows what she wants from life. About Chaurahen, which is more of an independent English film made on a small budget, Ojha said, “The success of niche English language films like ‘Dhobi Ghaat’ (by Kiran Rao) has encouraged people like us to take such films to the audience.” “And there is always an audience for good cinema,” she added. (PTI)