Director Nitin Kakkar, whose film Mitron, starring Jackky Bhagnani and Kritika Kamra, will soon hit the screens, talks to Asmita Sarkar about why it’s important to not repeat oneself as an artist
Filmmaker Nitin Kakkar sought freshness in his new film Mitron more than anything, be it in the cast or the location, and wanted to tell a simple story about India that appeals to everyone.
“I have seen movies about UP, Punjab, so I thought if I look for a new state there would be freshness. And I realised that Gujarat has not been explored much in Hindi cinema and decided to locate the film there. When I went to Gujarat I saw a culture of food trucks that were coming up and decided to use that in the film,” he said.
The film stars Jackky Bhagnani, Kritika Kamra, Pratik Gandhi and Shivam Parekh. “Jackky has not done a film in sometime and is in a way reinventing himself, while Kamra has only been seen in TV and a great actor like her wasn’t getting good opportunities there,” said Kakkar.
Like Jackky, he too looks forward to reinvent himself. Unlike his earlier tragic-comic stories like Filmistaan, for which he received a National Award, he has moved on to a lighter comedy about a clueless middle class Gujarati man who wants to find a direction and a wife.
“Any artist doesn’t want to keep repeating themselves. I don’t want to fall under any bracket. I want to try different genres so that I am able to grow as a director. I like to put myself in uncomfortable positions and do things I haven’t done before. I push myself to do something else and learn something in the process,” he said. He added that he doesn’t enjoy following trends or one process.
Ram Singh Charlie, which is yet to release, and Filmistaan were both darker comedies and yet he is ready to try romance, thriller, army and war-related films. While he wrote the script for the first two, the current film, Mitron, is adapted by Sharib Hashmi from a Telugu film.
“If I have a story to say, I write the script, if I don’t, I can trust another person’s writing too,” said Nitin, who began as a director in theatre, then moving on to TV shows before finally directing Filmistaan. “It is always better to bank on a script than trends, because they go out of fashion,” he said.
The film, Mitron, named after a word often used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi garnered questions about the choice of the title, which was clarified saying that it’s a common way to refer to friends in Gujarat. Asked if he faced any ridicule over it, he said, “I don’t think people are stupid to unnecessarily ridicule anything. There have been questions. People wanted to know why mitron and if it had something to do with Modi ji, but that has been clarified,” he said.
