After a wonderful short film that took everyone by surprise owing to its Gibberish language, ad filmmaker cum Director Milind Dhaimade is back with his first full length feature. Titled Tu Hai Mera Sunday, Milind’s film is a light-hearted story based in Mumbai. With his film being selected for the Work-in-Progress Lab at the ongoing Film Bazaar, Milind talks to us about the genesis of the idea, being part of Film Bazaar and the way ahead for his film.
Your first film, Prakata Het Yad came out a while back. What has kept you busy since?
Post Prakata Het Yad we’ve been doing advertising work as we went practically broke after it and had to replenish our funds (laughs). But mainly this (Tu Hai Mera Sunday) was one scripts that I was trying to develop from 2008. For the last couple of years there have been 2-3 scripts that I’ve been working on. When this script was finished, all of us felt that this was the right first feature to make. It is very relatable as a film and yet very different. We decided to push it and see where it goes. Subsequently a lot of things happened. I was trying to meet people and eventually, after understanding the market, I felt that it’s best that a film like this is made on our own terms; the way we want to make it. There are too many structures in the whole film business and it’s very difficult to get around each of them. Then you start thinking about comprising on your story and we did not want to do that. We really loved the script and the characters so we thought of doing it ourselves. We’ve been wondering about what to do with it (script) for a while and then eventually in 2014, we decided to make it. We luckily had people around us, our family and friends who were ready to pitch in.
So tell us about Tu Hai Mera Sunday? And where did the idea take birth?
Tu Hai Mera Sunday is a film about five friends who generally play football at Juhu Beach, Mumbai. They are not (professional) football players but a regular bunch of guys, who don’t really have anything in common, but have met at different stages of life and become close friends. For them the Sunday Juhu game is the only thing they look forward to. One day a crazy old man joins the group and he does something because of which a ban is imposed on playing at Juhu beach. Now these five guys have to find a place to play in Mumbai and intermittently you see their lives and how each one is dealing with their own space in Mumbai. Basically it’s about your space and finding happiness in that little space – how all of us living in urban India try to find our little islands of happiness.
The idea actually came from a real group called ‘Juhu Beach United’ that plays there. It has a close friend of mine and I used to love the way he would look forward to every Sunday and include everybody – guys and girls – in it and spread the word for football. And I just thought, what would happen if one day this guy could not play football? It started from there. It’s a very light film about different characters, their lives and what they are dealing with.
The film has several TV actors. Was there a particular thought behind casting these people?
No, not at all. The reason we decided to do this film on our own is because we wanted to have control on casting. It’s a very strong character – driven film. Most of the stories that I’ve written are from my life, my friends and family. Everything that has happened in this film has happened in my life which I’ve mixed and matched and put it across. We said we’ll go for good actors who’ll do justice to the role. That’s about it. I didn’t think of TV actors. Anmol and Abhishek who did the casting for us brought these people in front. Initially even I asked them why would you want to get TV actors? But when I saw their auditions, they were superb. The casting is not based on whether they are TV actors or who’s what; it’s just based on who was correct for the role. We didn’t have a strategy for casting as such.
Still from Tu Hai Mera Sunday
From a film in gibberish to a film with dialogues… how has the transition in treatment been?
In Prakata Het Yad, I’d never planned dialogues. When I got to briefing actors, I realized that the actors needed something to say. So we thought gibberish was nice because the situations were so graphic that they didn’t need definition in words. So gibberish was fun. Tu Hai Mera Sunday is a character – driven film. And the characters are living in Mumbai. If you see there is a guy called Dominic, one is Rashid, there’s Arjun, so there’s also the various fabrics of Mumbai that we have tried to bring in. And I needed to bring in the Mumbai language also. Because one part of Mumbai is the language – how we talk, how our English and Hindi is and how we mix up our languages and make it one thing. So here dialogues and the kind of words and how they were used were very critical for me.
What stage is the film currently at?
We are almost there, 90 per cent. Currently the sound design and some Post work is in process. Hopefully we should be ready by December. Then a review of the edit will happen and so on. Hence the Work-in-progress (WIP) lab at Film Bazaar where we hope to get inputs from people.
Coming to Film Bazaar’s WIP Lab, how does one get to be part of it?
We just sent our film. We didn’t have any strong expectations of any kind. We thought the Film Bazaar is a very nice way to gauge our film and we wanted a controlled environment where it doesn’t spread out too much. We thought Film Bazaar is a very good opportunity because it is a very controlled environment and has distributors, buyers, mainly that environment, which is very healthy. And sending it to the WIP lab was not a random move. There are curators like Deepti DCunha who see the film and they also International mentors who look at it and choose the films, which they feel are worth working on. We were very delighted when we got selected.
What is it that you’re looking forward to at the Lab at Film Bazaar? Your expectations?
We are hoping to get some more insights into making our film better. It’s an Edit lab and will largely focusing on editing the narrative. These are people who are highly experienced and have phenomenal expertise in films. Most of them have directed, edited and produced several films. The mentors have an amazing bio. It’s a good platform to get constructive opinion rather than random opinions. That’s something I’m really looking forward to. Secondly, we are also hoping to meet distributors and see how the film can move forward financially. We are really interested in the India market and never thought of it as a festival film. For us getting a platform in India and doing well here is most important. It’s a beautiful film about today, how people are and so on. When you are self-funded you need as much help as you can. We are very new to this (film business) and are not part of any clique. It’s our debut feature. We can only make a good film, after that it’s a grey area for all of us. So meeting people who have been doing this for a while might help us in understanding how to approach the next steps like distribution.
Still from the film
Since this is your first feature, what are the challenges you are encountering on this project?
This is our first long format film and it is a strong Mumbai based film. It has around 40 locations all over Mumbai. The biggest challenge was coordination and obviously being self – funded, we had to be tight with our budgets. We could not afford to make mistakes and lose days. We had made a 35-38 day schedule and the biggest challenge was to stick to it. Between that there was an industry strike and we were also getting close to the monsoons. The whole challenge was capturing Mumbai, which no one has done for a long time, getting that essence of the city. Shooting all over the city was the most difficult thing. We had an amazing crew, the actors were fabulous because of which everyone had a great time and we actually managed to stick to the schedule. We shot some amazing stuff. Everyone has done a fantastic job and the creative has not been compromised. We shot at various places including Juhu beach, which was a little challenging. No one has seen Juhu beach the way we’ve shot it.
But weren’t permissions a challenge considering it’s shot in Mumbai?
Since we’ve been doing ads we know how to get permissions. We know the right departments and people. And if there were no permission we didn’t push for it. We looked at places where permission could be obtained. But Mumbai is very difficult. Plus crowd control is another problem even though we didn’t have any big stars.
You mentioned that this film isn’t made with a festival circuit in mind. But once its done how do you plan to take the film out there?
We are going serendipitously on this one. Film Bazaar is the first beautiful surprise for us. There are going to be festival delegates coming there so we are going to invite them. Our screenings are only by invitation at Film Bazaar; we aren’t keeping it open. We have two industry screenings happening one on November 21 and one on November 23. We’ll see the responses we receive. Also post the WIP lab we will get a better idea about where we stand. This is a start for us. If a larger festival platform has liked us we’ll see how that pans out. Our strategy was very simple, in a situation where you’re new, make a good product and then approach people and show it to them. That’s the best way to go when you’re new.
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