The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) aims at providing a common platform to the cinemas across the world to project the excellence of the art of film making. An open forum was held at IFFI 2019, today where the panellists discussed ‘how real are these reality based feature films’. Speakers on the panel were filmmaker Rahul Rawail, Associate Editor, The Indian Express Alaka Sahani, FTII Alumni & Director Of Photography Naresh Sharma, Actor & Director Devendra Khandelwal, and Israeli Filmmaker Dan Wolman.
Talking about biopics, director Rahul Rawail said, “Biopics should be docudrama and not documentary. Filmmakers should always tell a real story in that format or else biopics can be absolutely boring. However, while filmmakers are pretty certain about some sequences for more dramatic effect, the essence of the story should not go.”
“For example, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made Bhaag Milkha Bhaag but somehow it deviated from his real life as they didn’t show certain facts to insert some dramatic effect,” he added.
Alaka Sahni said, “For me, it is about how authentic is the treatment and how believable is the story. I can’t really call films like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Sanju, realistic. India has seen phases of films by Bimal Roy, Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Shyam Benegal, who have made films on realism.”
Naresh Sharma was of the opinion that, there are two types of Filmmakers, one who want to play safe and say that their films are loosely based on true events and one like Mani Ratnam whose film Guru was based on the life story of Dhirubhai Ambani but he never mentioned anywhere. Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday was based on author’s Hussain Zaidi’s book.
“I feel, actors of any film play an important role in bringing out realistic cinema. Actors, who play the real life characters put in soul to make any film look real”, he added.
Devendra Khandelwal shared, “More than anything, I feel the sound, camera and other technical aspects make any film realistic.”
