Latest news with #HazaaronKhwaisheinAisi
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First Post
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- First Post
Chitrangda Singh on her upcoming comedy 'Housefull 5': 'It's harder to make people laugh than cry'
In Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, Chitrangda captivated audiences as Nandini Basak, the formidable Leader of the Opposition read more Chitrangda Singh has long been celebrated for her versatility and ability to bring depth to every role she takes on. Whether portraying emotionally complex characters in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and Inkaar or delivering powerful performances like Nandini Basak in Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, she has consistently demonstrated a great range as an actor. Now, she is preparing to surprise audiences yet again by stepping into an out-and-out comedy with Housefull 5. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'This is actually the absolute first time I'm doing comedy, and let me tell you, it is very difficult,' Chitrangda admits. 'I genuinely believe it's harder to make people laugh than to make them cry.' She describes the genre as an entirely different skillset, one that demands precision, restraint, and rhythm. 'It's a different ball game altogether. You have to be so smooth that all your jokes and timing land perfectly. It's not just about delivering a funny line - it's about the energy, the pacing, the setup. Comedy is serious business.' While the film promises humor, Chitrangda hints that it's not all fun and games. 'You can expect me doing some comedy, yes - but the film is not just comedy. There are a lot of twists and turns. It's a very interesting script,' she says. 'The character is definitely going to surprise you.' In Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, Chitrangda captivated audiences as Nandini Basak, the formidable Leader of the Opposition. With yet another powerful performance, she reaffirmed her versatility and the quiet strength she brings to every role. Not stopping with Housefull 5, Chitrangda will also be seen next in Raat Akeli Hai 2, further solidifying her ability to navigate diverse genres with ease. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
The Hindu
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
‘Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' director Sudhir Mishra: I'm not always on the side of my characters
'No critic asks me why I name a film set around the Emergency after a Ghalib couplet,' wonders Sudhir Mishra amid an intense conversation. Two decades after Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, a tale of unfulfilled desires set against the Emergency and the Naxalite Movement stirred our souls, director Sudhir Mishra is mounting another drama set against the politically volatile period. Spread over eight episodes, the title Summer of '77 sounds like HKA in long form. The deep fissures on Mishra's face give way to a gentle smile. 'It is about six-seven characters from different social backgrounds involved in the JP Movement who question the idea of India handed over to them by their fathers. It is about rebellion, relationships, and politics in between. It is set in a space where old structures were breaking and new women were emerging to claim rights over their bodies. They no longer wanted to be owned by a relationship or a man. Some were much more experimental in their worldview than today's women.' It is not HKA, he avers, but as the filmmaker is the same, he says, the audience will see a part of him, his viewpoint on life. 'While HKA veers towards the Naxalite movement, Summer of '77 is about the movement started by Jai Prakash Narayan. In HKA, the three characters hail from a niche class, which we can call Indian desis for want of a better word, who struggle to find their own India. Here, the characters come from the mainstream middle class, and they are reacting to their India being taken away from them. That is how it speaks to today's audience.' Mishra says he was too young in the 1970s, but his elder brother and uncles were very much interested. Few know that Mishra's maternal grandfather, D.P. Mishra, was a freedom fighter and a staunch congressman who served as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in the 1960s. 'He walked out of Congress in 1974 because he could not take what was happening in the party. Part of the series is based on his recollection of the period, which he wrote about in the third volume of his autobiography. I have also used the reflections of youth leaders of the period, like Ramesh Dixit, who started as a leftist and then moved to the socialist fold. Then there are observations of academics like Pushpesh Pant that helped me structure the base of the narrative before imagination took over.' These days, the Emergency period has become a tool for filmmakers to comment on today's politics. 'It is important because the repercussions of that period are being felt now. Most of today's events are determined by the politics of that period,' argues Mishra, who was part of the jury at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards this year, where political plays were well received. Not interested in mere recreation of the past, the filmmaker says, in his universe, 'Emergency becomes a metaphor for the thought that every time a political establishment imposes itself, there is a reaction to it.' He underlines that HKA stays fresh because it is about 'young people anytime, anywhere, reacting to the world that confronts them.' They want to realise their potential, but they don't follow the path offered to them. The title, he says, represents Mirza Ghalib's influence on him. 'It is a kind of Sufi view of life. I am not always on the side of my characters. The idealists get scared after watching themselves in the darkness of the theatre. Extreme radicals get miffed.' Right from Aditya (Nirmal Pandey) in Is Raat Ki Subhah Nahin to Vikram Malhotra (Kay Kay Menon) in HKA, Ayyan Mani (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) in Serious Men, and Rahab (Nawaz) in Afwaah, Mishra doesn't put his male protagonists, hailing from varied social groups, on a pedestal. More than the heroes, it is Mishra's muses like Geeta in HKA or Chameli that seem more in control of the situation. 'I find women more decisive. They understand loss better. They are willing to admit mistakes more than men.. They are open to accepting what life offers and embracing it. They make for emotionally richer characters,' Mishra muses. It is not that he doesn't understand his male protagonists. 'My men are not weak, but they are frail. They are softer. They make mistakes.' A section of the audience and film stars, he feels, have a problem with that kind of expression. 'I don't think there is any such thing as a permanent hero. Everybody is a hero in some time frame.' For instance, he says, Rahab lives in a liberal bubble of literary fests. 'That world doesn't open the door for him when he needs it the most. This narrative of finding permanent heroes has destroyed the world. The thought that a hero will come to change the world is flawed. Narratives programmed for a happily ever after scenario, and there is light at the end of the tunnel, don't often prepare you for life. They become like advertisements for fairness creams.' On Anurag Kashyap shifting base to South India Reflecting on his disciple and friend Anurag Kashyap shifting base to South India, Mishra says it seems the Mumbai film industry's atmosphere was proving stifling for him. 'He is reinventing himself. It is not that he has given up hope. His next film, Nishanchi, is set in Uttar Pradesh. I found the statement a bit extreme. I love him, he loves me, but he doesn't listen to me. He is close to South Indian filmmakers and doesn't believe in the North-South divide. He is among the first to discuss the need for a pan Indian cinema.' Mishra feels like the filmmakers, film critics also need to understand life. 'Most people who write about films set in the North don't seem to understand the peculiarities of the region. For instance, in Afwaah, one prominent critic questioned how the villagers didn't identify Vicky, not realising that he is one small-time MLA in one area of Rajasthan out of 200 in the State.' Recalling his experience with Chameli, Mishra says not many saw the plot as an impossible situation that talks about the right of a sex worker to say no and overlooked how the film navigates the relationship between her and the pimp. 'The film's success was largely reduced to two songs, Saat Samundar and Bhagey Re Man. They are very nice songs, but there was much more.' Mishra has delved into mainstream space with films like Calcutta Mail, but it has not been a satisfying experience. 'The only way to make a good film is to make one that you would like to watch yourself. The directors who make mainstream films are in sync with the audience of those films. They should not pretend in the evening that they are superior to the audience. They are the audience!' On his way forward, Mishra says he has decided to go back to being the boy who made Dharavi in 1991. 'I want to make films without caring; not going into elaborate systems of Bombay that make cinema expensive, but the investment doesn't reflect on screen. If you watch Malayalam cinema, they pick up rich subjects, but they are not necessarily big-budget.'
Hindustan Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Chitrangda Singh on what lacks in Hindi films: There's more time spend on slow motions than the actual content
Chitrangda Singh recently completed 20 years in the Hindi film industry and till date, the actor is finding new avenues to sink her teeth into. Last month, she made her web series debut with filmmaker Neeraj Pandey's Khakee The Bengal Chapter. When prodded why it took her so long to make her foray in this format, Chitrangda Sing insists it was because of the subpar writing offered to her before this. 'The writing has to be so good for the web as it's not just about one person. A series has so many characters and it's a collective effort for that to work. Everyone's arc and chatacterisation has to work together. It's not a feature, spearheaded just one person who is carrying the film,' she says, adding that the long format doesn't rely on the peripherals that feature film thrive on. The 48-year-old adds, 'There are no crutches of a song or slow motion shots. It's purely dependent on the writing, acting and the execution. In feature films nowadays, there is no time, everything is so cut to cut. There's more time spend on slow motions than the actual content. Thus, I was always very scared about the OTT space. I did get offered quite a few series, but I always felt that they weren't written well enough. That's one of the reasons I stayed away. This is a very difficult format to be on and for an actor to be that good throughout is a challenge as it depends on a lot of factors.' With Khakee, she found the same freedom and scope of exploration that she did with her debut film Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. 'I started with something very similar with my first film. But for some reason, these kinds of parts don't get written that much. I would have loved to do this kind of work more because naturally, I steer towards characters which are more complex, more human and more flawed. Even with this character in Khakee, while she is the leader of opposition, she also has a strong emotional graph. To play someone who is struggling with pain, ambition, love and idealism, I found it very interesting,' she insists. Chitrangda wishes to get more such parts written for her in the web space. 'It gives you a lot more time to explore your characters as the makers invest that time in it. The long format is the place if you want to hone your skill. I have tasted blood now but now I have to look for something that feels just as good,' she ends.
Indian Express
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi turns 20: One of the best campus movies, this one is for the ages
It is amongst the best campus movies made not just in India, but internationally. Sudhir Mishra catches the zeitgeist of DU (Delhi University) in the early 70s– not just as a lookbook, with the exaggerated Bachchan hair cuts and the 48 inch bell-bottoms—but also the way the cool kids back then used to talk, hang out (no, they didn't just 'hang'), and do other fun stuff, including sit in on dharnas and feel very political while cutting classes, dreaming of the revolution. The idealistic Geeta (Chitrangada Singh) is madly in love with Siddharth aka Sid (Kay Kay), the privileged, entitled bungalow-dweller (these days, he'd be dubbed, straight off, anti-national, not just because he runs off to join the Naxal movement but because he is born into Lutyens Delhi), who goes off to fight against 'injustice and oppression'. Vikram (Shiney Ahuja) is the not-so-well-off street-smart fixer, as that most Dilli of all Dilli characters. There's also Ram Kapoor as the good-hearted 'babu' (bureaucrat), who adds to the slate of terrific acting in the movie. Hazaaron is a very Dilli film, a wonderfully life-like reflection of the Capital of the late 60s, and 70s, when sections of it were a hot-bed of hot-headed rebels who learnt how to 'lal salaam' like they meant it, with some following it up to actually fight the good fight in villages, and many, predictably, coming right back to their lives of liveried comfort. ALSO READ | Sudhir Mishra reveals Basu Chatterjee 'rejected' Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi from National Awards consideration: 'Unka haq tha' It's also a strongly political film, which, without being pedantic, trains its lens on the many Indias which collide with each other, and disrupt age-old power equations before being forced to find their level. There's unrest in the air, Emergency is around the corner, and our trio is learning how to come of age, in that most turbulent era, where erstwhile princes, and sharp commoners rub elbows while figuring out how to survive, and thrive. Very few parts of the film appear dated. The backdrop of the misty winter mornings in Delhi, the wispy smoke rising off joints in grungy rooms with the mandatory Che posters, the furtive couplings of young lovers, the heat rising off the ground in the villages, the cracks in the idealism and the naivete that the young all over the world wear as an armour, the harsh lessons life hands out to us when no one is looking, all of it feels as fresh and urgent as it did back when it came out in 2005. The performances are all top-notch. Kay Kay Menon was the only one who had had some acting experience; the sultry Chitrangada, rocking her crumpled 'sooti' cotton saris, was immediately dubbed the new Smita Patil, and Shiney (who has since disappeared, after being convicted for sexual assault of his domestic help) who was brilliant as the guy who always wants more, whose moral compass is shaky, but whose only redeeming feature is his love for Geeta, which remains unshaken. And finally, tell me, does anyone forget the time when they were young and foolish, and madly in love, and passionate about poetry, while, of course, determined to change the world? The film's music is sublime: 'Baawra Mann', written by Swanand Kirkire, composed by Shantanu Moitra, and sung by Shubha Mudgal, is a song for the ages.
Time of India
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'Stories find you…And 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' found me,' says Sudhir Mishra as he reflects on 20 years of his defining film
In the vast landscape of Indian cinema , few films have left as deep and lasting an imprint as ' Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi .' As the seminal political love story completes 20 years, filmmaker Sudhir Mishra opens up in an exclusive conversation about the journey that led to the making of his most celebrated work. Here are the excerpts from the interview: Tell us about the genesis of 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' as it turned 20 'Firstly, I'm glad you consider 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' to be my best. I agree. You know, I've often wondered: do you write the stories, or do the stories find you? I tend to believe, more and more, that stories find you—and you should only make the story that finds you.' 'But we end up making many films to make that one film we truly want to. I think 'Hazaaron...' is that film—one that only I could have made.' 'I mean, it's no accident that there are no other films quite like 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi'. It's a difficult act to follow. I don't know if I'm being immodest, but my whole background prepared me for it—my Nehruvian father, my grandfather who was a follower of Sardar Patel and was, in some way, instrumental in bringing Mrs. Gandhi to power.' 'Then there were my own left-leaning views at the time, and the generation I grew up with, which was very inspiring. That was the last generation that actively reacted against the political and cultural legacy handed to them by their parents. They didn't just accept that inheritance—they wanted to build something else. That was also a generation for whom life wasn't only about loving their parents, but also about holding someone else's hand or looking out for the less fortunate.' If you had to remake it now, what would you change? 'Could I make it now? I think I could—if I had a subject as powerful. But I'm not sure. I don't know how the government would react. And would market pressures allow it? Would someone let me make a film like that now? Absolutely no one!' 'Pritish Nandy had the grace and guts to back it, because he came from that era where some people still took chances. The subject was also close to him. Without Pritish, 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' would not have existed.' In hindsight, do you think casting Shiney Ahuja in the central role was the right call? 'I had already cast someone else when Zoya Akhtar sent Shiney to my assistant, then associate, Ruchi Narayan. I changed the cast because suddenly I saw Vikram in Shiney.' 'As for the female lead, it was casting that landed in my lap. I had auditioned hundreds of women, and suddenly Chitrangda walked in. Shiney walked into another audition. I tried my best to find someone for the Siddharth character. KK was already established, so I hesitated to cast him, but ultimately, I followed my original instinct and cast him.' A lot of the team went on to do well for themselves… 'People forget that Swanand Kirkire was my assistant. He wanted to be a director, but he was also singing some songs—and one of them happened to be 'Bhawra Mann Dekhne Chala Ek Sapna'. I decided to include it in the end credits. It does something amazing: it makes you sit down after the film ends. As Vikram rests his head on Geeta's shoulder, the song fades in and makes you reflect. It changed Swanand's career.' If you remade 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi', whom would you cast in the lead? 'I would cast Shiney again. I thought he was brilliant. When I made that film, I felt like some force beyond me was guiding it. Everything that went wrong during planning somehow led to better solutions. It felt like someone was looking out for me. I'm very grateful to that film.' What happened to the idea of a sequel? 'One of my regrets… Pritish Nandy always asked me to write a sequel, but I couldn't find a story good enough. I thought that if I made a bad sequel, it would interfere with the memory of the first film. So I didn't. But yes—I wish I had.'
