Director of ‘Sharmaji Ki Beti’ Tahira Kashyap: Making a female-centric film is very difficult
Director Tahira Kashyap recently spoke in an exclusive interview with IndiaToday.in about her latest directorial venture ‘Sharmaji Ki Beti’, the process of getting it approved and more.
Filmmaker Tahira Kashyap may have shot her first film as a director a few years ago, but audiences will finally get to see it on Friday. The slice-of-life film, Sharmaji Ki Beti, will release on Prime Video on June 28. Speaking exclusively to IndiaToday.in, Tahira said the story comes from the corner of her heart and she has a “little bit” of her in it. She also spoke about the difficulties she faced while starting the film because of its inclusion of female characters.
We also asked him about the challenges of bringing the film on the floors. Tahir said, “I had approached a few producers with the film. I am glad that I had great cheerleaders like Tanuj Garg and Atul Kasbekar. They stuck to the project despite all the hurdles and challenges. I had my own personal journey, and then the pandemic struck and we saw two lockdowns. It is a small film and such hurdles make things more difficult. However, we had the conviction and once it was made, we took it to the theatres.”
Tahira Kashyap said, “There was definitely some resistance from various parts of the cinema world. Women were leading films, so things were limited. There have been some protests and cuts and I won’t deny that it is very difficult to make a female-led film. I think it will take maybe 10 more ‘crews’ for it to become normal.”
Explaining the reason behind choosing such characters in her film, Tahira said, “These characters come from a very sacred place and are a part of my world. That’s why I kept five characters at different stages of life, because I wanted to cover all these spaces. From the age of 13 to 35, they all have different experiences in life. Usually, there is nothing for women in Indian cinema before and after the age of 20. Even if there is, they are either crying mothers, heartbroken divorcees, or very stereotypical characters. I wanted to show true stories of real women.”
Every new filmmaker hopes to bring their film to the big screen. However, Tahira Kashyap said Sharmaji Ki Beti is beyond algorithms: “It has a lot of innocence. If it were a theatre, I would have cast an A-lister hero and a young beautiful girl, and added a love story, while these stories would have been left as sub-plots. But I wanted to stick to my vision.”
Tahira added, “At the same time, I think every medium has its own strengths. With OTT, the audience has been offered a variety of content, which has had a huge impact on theatrical releases. Today, we have Munjhiya which is doing so well or even A Crew. Still, I think we can bring a certain number of films to theatres, but we have to keep going. Yes, there is always a desire to be in theatres because I want to explore every possible medium.”
Sharmaji Ki Betiyaan stars Sakshi Tanwar, Saiyami Kher, Divya Dutta and Arista Mehta.
