Interview: Vikramaditya Motwane
By: Jai Rajendrakumar
It is quite rare for an Indian film to be featured at Cannes, but somehow first-time director Vikramaditya Motwane managed to land an invitation to screen his debut production of Udaan at the just-concluded 63rd Cannes International Film Festival, which stars television actor Ronit Roy and was featured at the prestigious event’s Un Certain Regard section. A joint production between UTV Motion Pictures’ Ronny Screwvala, Anurag Kashyap and Sanjay Singh, Udaan represented India’s first official selection at the France-based film festival for the first time in seven years. Motwane shared his thoughts with the media about his thoughts about his presence at Cannes.
“I feel very humbled,” the first-time director — who started his career working on projects such as Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Water, Paanch and Devdas – told reporters. “I am quite surprised that the Cannes Film Festival picked Udaan. Being an official selection at Cannes is encouraging. Quite frankly, the film was not made for festival as a target, but a commercial film.”
Motwane went on to detail the plot of his film, which presented a strong, overarching moral of authoritarian parents and a common practice in India of sending children to far-away boarding schools. In Udaan, the film’s lead character, Rohan, was sent to boarding school. After eight months, the young child returns home to a small industrial town in Jharkhand, only to adjust to life with his authoritarian father and a half-brother he never knew existed.
Even worse, Rohan is forced against his wishes to forgo his aspirations to be a writer, study engineering and work with his father at a steel factory. Alas, the point finally comes where Rohan must decide which life is best for him — the one forced by his father, or the one his young heart anxiously desires.
The debutant director said there were elements of his life featured in the film’s storyline, despite its fictional nature. Yet he stressed to the media, during his stay in France, that he wanted audiences to walk away relating to a young man’s journey to discover self-freedom.
“It is a film made with a lot of honesty and a lot of dedication,” the director informed the press about the significance of Rohan’s journey.
That journey loosely imitated the real-life arduous path taken by Motwane himself, who said he was blessed to come across a pair of producers in Kashyap and Singh after commencing a search for someone to fill that very role since 2003. Meeting them in March 2009, Motwane added that not only did the pair of producers help him raise the $725,000 necessary to make the film necessary, but Kashyap apparently helped with the script.
“Anurag and Sanjay raised enough money to turn my script into a film. They packed me off to shoot the film, and backed me all the way to make the film I always wanted to,” he told the press. “The aspiration level has gone up. Udaan has also given new energy to directors like me in India, to aim high.”
With Screwvala and UTV Motion Pictures on board to help with marketing and distribution, Udaan was apparently solid enough to be presented to relevant audiences at the Cannes Film Market before its anticipated worldwide release on July 16th.
Hopefully the film generated enough buzz for everyone’s investment to pay off.
