‘I was very keen to make another film and I was dying to say action and cut and get back into creating characters and creating worlds.’
‘But I just didn’t have a script I was happy with.’
‘I was working every day on the writing and I was struggling with that.’
IMAGE: Laapataa Ladies marks the first joint production outing between Kiran Rao and Aamir Rao. Photograph: Kind courtesy Kiran Rao/Instagram
Kiran Rao is a woman of many talents.
She is a Writer, Director, and recently turned Producer with a production house, Kindling Pictures.
After making a stellar directorial debut in 2011 with Dhobi Ghat, Kiran was keenly waiting to come up with her next feature.
Thirteen years later, it is here. Laapataa Ladies will release in theatres on March 1.
Jointly produced with Aamir Khan Productions (AKP), the film stars Pratibha Ranta and Nitanshi Goel in titular characters.
“(I want to) tell stories that perhaps other people would not want to tell because they think they are risky or they are unusual or they bare telling the story of a segment of people that are otherwise very marginalised,” Kiran tells Mayur Sanap/Rediff.com.
You once said that you were busy with production responsibilities at AKP, but did you miss saying ‘Action!’ and ‘Cut!’ on set?
When Dhobi Ghat released in 2011, I couldn’t have dreamed that it would take me another 13 years to make a film.
I was very keen to make another film and I was dying to, like you said, say action and cut and get back into creating characters and creating worlds. But I just didn’t have a script on paper that I was happy with.
I was working every day on the writing and I was struggling with that. I just didn’t have something that I was thoroughly satisfied with.
I was very satisfied being a mom at that point. Azad had just been born in the same year that Dhobi Ghat was made.
I suppose the creative part of my brain was very fulfilled with being a mother.
I did struggle with the fact that I was not making a film though.
It did frustrate me.
There were days which were quite low.
But at the same time, I knew that it was important to make the kind of film I wanted to make.
Luckily, I found this story.
Photograph: Kind courtesy Kiran Rao/Instagram
You have written, directed and co-produced this film under your banner, Kindling Pictures. How did you juggle between these three responsibilities and how challenging was the entire process?
The original story was written by Biplab Goswami. We brought on Sneha Desai to write the screenplay.
Luckily with her, I had somebody who could take whatever ideas I had and bring them to such great life on paper. Sneha was the one who really created this world that I wanted to build and set.
There was an additional dialogue writer called Divyanidhi Sharma who created the character of Manohar, which Ravi Kishan plays.
I was supported by great writers. I could not have made this film without them.
Directing and producing was something I knew I could do quite easily.
I had my own production house that I had just started.
I wanted to make this production.
I wanted to shoot on real locations.
But I wanted to keep a very small crew and make it a little bit more in the way that independent films are made.
I had a producer called Tanaji Dasgupta. He and I worked together to produce it.
And, of course, directing it was the icing on the cake for me.
IMAGE: Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao, Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel and Sparsh Shrivastava at a promotional event for their film. Photograph: Kind courtesy Kiran Rao/Instagram
While Dhobi Ghat was an urban story, Laapataa Ladies takes us to the hinterland. How do you tune in and out of subjects as diverse as these? Tell us about your creative process.
I am an urban girl, I’ve grown up in cities like Bombay. I’ve also lived in Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore.
I’ve never really lived in a village.
But I have a feeling all of us instinctively know Indian villages.
We’ve all experienced them.
We’ve met people.
We have family in villages.
I’ve also worked at the Paani Foundation where we’ve extensively travelled in villages.
It wasn’t so hard for me to imagine the kind of rural milieu I wanted to create. It was not difficult at all.
I feel people are people everywhere.
Having the rural-urban divide is in some way assuming that they are very different as human beings from us, when actually that’s not the case.
I mean, it’s just the ways of life that differ. Or perhaps certain perspectives are different.
If you understand human nature and why people do what they do, you could tell a story of just about anywhere.
SEE: Kiran tells us how she cast Nitanshi Goel and Pratibha Ranta in Laapataa Ladies.
The film finds humour in the direst situations. And at the same time, it packs biting social commentary.
We were very keen the comedy hit the right note.
Technically, the situation shouldn’t be funny because two girls are missing. And there are people looking for them. They are far away from home and can’t get back.
I wanted to hit the note where you’re laughing at the character, but you’re also empathising with the character and feeling the character’s struggle or pain. For me, hitting the sweet spot of that was the challenge. I hope I’ve achieved it.
I do feel comedy or a person’s experience is a better communicator of an idea than exposition. We tried very hard to make it a subtext or a layer or a nuance rather than a lecture.
It is a coming of age film, and at the same time, it is also a film about sisterhood.
Yes, it is a film about sisterhood.
It’s a film about women finding that little space within themselves, within their circumstances, within the lives that they lead.
It is also setting up the fact that we all live different experiences, but within that we can have our identities.
You can be a hero like Deepak (played by Sparsh Shrivastava), who is also vulnerable and emotional, but still is a very strong guy and has the strength of conviction to do the right thing.
There’s a lot of ideas about how we need to be kind to each other and create spaces for each other, whether women or men.
IMAGE: Sparsh Shrivastava with Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel. Photograph: Kind courtesy Kiran Rao/Instagram
The feminism in the film comes out so naturally, whether it is Phool (Nitanshi Goel’s character) feeling proud of her first earning at a tea stall or Pushpa Rani (Pratibha Ranta’s character) taking a stand.
The challenge was to create all these different kinds of characters who, within their situations, have to find a way to resolve.
The way that Sneha had written these characters with their struggles, with their desires, they were very, very, believable. And you can empathise with them.
We wanted to create the idea that there is a solution. There is a way that you can be the person you want to be.
That was something that the script offered, which I loved, and I was really, really happy with.
SEE: Kiran reveals Aamir Khan wanted to play THIS role in Laapataa Ladies.
You recently said that an evolved audience is great for film-makers. How does that empower you as a storyteller?
It’s very exciting that people are watching content from all over the world. They ARE interested in all kinds of stories, all formats and lengths of stories, all languages and cultures as a result of OTT.
As a film-maker that has enabled me to take a lot more risks, take a lot more interesting subjects that perhaps traditionally we would not have thought of.
It has opened up my world in terms of what I can address as ideas and subjects.
And honestly, then it’s up to me to make the story interesting enough that the audience wants to watch it. It’s our job to create something that the audience would choose to watch, because right now the choice is immense and endless.
The fact that they want to spend time and money on you is something that you need to work at.
During the Barbie press tour, Greta Gerwig had said that every director has a fantasy baseball league in their head of what movies they want to make, and that she would like to juggle between small, intimate cinema and big scale films.
With Kindling Pictures, what’s your ambition and what kind of stories do you wish to tell?
The ambition is to tell stories that excite me.
In a very simple way, it’s like saying I want to serve dishes that I like to eat. But also dishes that you’ll remember and want to go back to and want to eat again. Something that perhaps will stand the test of time.
(I want to) tell stories that perhaps other people would not want to tell because they think they are risky or they are unusual or they bare telling the story of a segment of people that are otherwise very marginalised.
I’m interested in all kinds of storytelling, not just my direction, but hopefully will facilitate other directors and voices too.
Will future productions be independent of AKP?
AKP is one of those companies that we will pitch to and we hope that Aamir will want to produce some of the things that we make.
I know that a lot of the things that we want to make are also for OTT as well as other platforms.
The collaboration with Aamir Khan Productions is always one that I will want and I would love, but it’s quite likely that we’ll be doing work with other people.
