Actor-siblings Huma Qureshi and Saqib Saleem will be coming together for the first time with horror thriller Dobaara. The brother-sister duo believes that content is the key and is bent on pushing the envelope. By Unnati Joshi
Huma Qureshi and brother Saqib Saleem are chirpy, crisp and happy whenever they are together. We caught up with them while they were going back to their hotel in Delhi after a long day of promotions. Huma seemed a little tired but no complaints as her brother was at his candid best.
“We were always keen on working together, but we didn’t know it would happen so soon. The first few days were a bit bewildering because I had to be the brother as well as play the character. But after a point, it all came naturally. We know each other so well as siblings that we had to dissociate ourselves on sets and treat each other like co-actors, which is very important,” Saqib shared.
For Huma it was all blurry. “I think it was easier for him to balance things out. It got a little blurry initially as I always think of him as a brother first. But he was a co-actor here, so it took longer to adjust to an imagined context for me.”
The film is an adaptation of the supernatural psychological horror film Oculus. “B4U and Relativity wanted to tell a story that would work in the country and wanted to adapt Oculus. If you have watched the original film, let me clarify it isn’t a cut-copy-paste. It is an adaptation with our interpretation. And as far as the story goes, it’s about two siblings, one of whom is a believer in evil and the other a non-believer. An incident 12 years ago destroys their family and the film begins when they have met dobaara (again) and are re-living those memories. Both of them have different stories. The sister’s point of view is influenced by the fact that there is something that’s supernatural and it’s because of that their family got destroyed. But the brother says that the father had an extra-marital affair and that changed the course of events. So the contradiction between the two is what essentially Dobaara is about,” Saqib told us, taking charge of introducing the film.
last seen on screen in the actioner Dishoom, Saqib feels that horror is one genre that hasn’t been explored maturely in Hindi cinema. “I am very anxious and very very excited. It’s the first time Huma and I are doing something together. I hope we manage to scare the audience,” he added.
Huma is more nervous than excited. “Saqib and I have worked very hard in the film and expectations are high. I hope we can deliver the goods. But I can’t talk about my character as it will spoil the fun,” she laughed. She, however, threw a puzzle at us. “All I will say is that the movie is about brother and sister fighting each other for each other.”
Saqib feels that the mainstream Hindi industry is now a fertile ground for creative ideas. “I would like to believe that with every passing year we are genuinely making good films. As an industry we should realise that content is very important. We should make good stories, we need to work on a movie and not a project. All we need to do is give importance to the writers. If we do that, then we are going to get stories that inspire us, stories that need to be told. People are done with the clichés. We should move past that and try on improving the content.”
“I always think content is the key but technology is going to play a big part in the next few years,” Huma chipped in.
Asked about an actor’s challenges and Saqib shot back, “I have tried to be very different with every film. All the characters that I have played have been very happy and bright and this guy has a dark part. He was in juvenile prison for 12 years, so referring to this was very difficult. I had to go and figure out how people are there. I have never seen that side of life. To understand what they do, I spent some time with them in juvenile home in Delhi. In fact I went slightly overboard and locked myself in a room one day. To just see what would my reaction be if I cut myself from the world.”
Huma made it sound easy and said, “Every film comes with some challenges. In this film we were under a lot of pressure on incorporating a club number or a title track. But we stuck to our conviction and did not yield.”
She knows for she is so much more than your conventional “pretty” Bollywood heroine. Starting her career with modelling and theatre, five years into the industry and Huma has managed to make a space for herself, spreading the message that “I am here to stay” loud and clear. “I have been fortunate to be a part of so many landmark films if like Gangs of Wasseypur, Badlapur, Jolly llB 2 and even those films that didn’t do very well; I consider them a very important learning experience for me. Both Saqib and I are doing the work we love. In our own little way, with this film or any that we do in the future, are trying to break the mould by putting out content that young people, the Netflix generation wants to see,” Huma said.
Not giving in to useless size-zero fads, she has always been comfortable in her own skin. How did she deal with people body-shaming her and judging her choices of filmIJ “I am an actor, people are going to judge me. But I just try to have fun with my work. I don’t let people let bother me,” she said confidently.