Even as he is developing three projects, director Dibakar Banerjee on how his 2022 film Tees has been shelved by Netflix and his struggle to find another producer for its release
Dibakar Banerjee
One thing to know about Dibakar Banerjee is that his mind is always ticking, he is always pursuing his next story. That’s exactly what the director has been doing in the 10 months since his last release, Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 (2024). He is currently co-writing three scripts and testing new waters with each. “The need to start from zero is very important. Otherwise I’ll become a senior filmmaker. I don’t want that. My hair is falling, but my brain is still young. I want to start from zero. I have never done the kind of films that [I’m developing] now,” he says.
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Manisha Koirala and Naseeruddin Shah lead Tees, which is a multi-generational family saga. Pics/AFP, Instagram
The new projects, however, share one aspect with the acclaimed movies that Banerjee has made in his 18-year career so far—dark humour. It has been a constant in his stories, be it Oye Lucky Lucky Oye (2008) or Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (2021). “I’m not making a funny film. But all my films have humour. I can’t tell stories without it,” he says. Through each movie, the two-time National Award-winning filmmaker will explore the country’s different eras. “They are set in India— contemporary India, India of the past, and of the future.”
While Banerjee is looking forward to his future projects, the past is also on his mind. The director’s Tees, a Kashmiri family’s saga exploring India’s “personal, ideological, and sexual history,” was initially set for a 2022 Netflix première. However, the streamer held off the release of the Naseeruddin Shah and Manisha Koirala-starrer. Banerjee, who was reportedly told that it wasn’t the right time to release the film, has been since searching for a producer, who can buy it off the streamer. It has reminded him of the struggle he faced with Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006), which wasn’t finding takers as it was an unconventional film for the time.
“Tees is a film that is suppressed. I considered it my best before LSD 2. It’s made for the audience of Khosla Ka Ghosla, the same audience that started my journey. We are trying desperately [to find a producer]. It’s almost like my Khosla Ka Ghosla experience being repeated. We went around showing that film to every distributor for two years and everyone would say, ‘What a film!’ But nobody would buy it. It took Ronnie [Screwvala], UTV and Sid [Siddharth Roy Kapur] to release it.”
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