Covering Bollywood and the Hindi Cinema

Rang De Basanti has catapulted Rakeysh Mehra to the Directors A List in Bollywood and now whatever he does makes news. Looks like his auto-biographical film Delhi-6 is all set to roll which has  Abhishek Bachchan, Om Puri, Divya Dutta and Atul Kulkarni in the lead. The director is currently looking for an actress to play the lead  female protagonist for the film as he is back from LA.

He talks about the RDB phenomena at the Golden Globe Screening where it got a standing ovation and was watched by 30 jury members.

“I feel we've lit a fire at the awards. Before going there I was apprehensive. They got the point of Rang De Basanti immediately. The relationship between the Hindu radical (Atul Kulkarni) and the Muslim protagonist (Kunal Kapoor) caught their attention. I guess Islamic fundamentalism is foremost in everyone's mind. World terrorism and the isolation of the Muslim were themes that the American audience understood in my film. More importantly the theme of the lost generation is far more pertinent in the than out here. As for references to Indian history and our freedom fighters that was a revelation to them. For the Americans, Mahatma Gandhi has always been the face of . Characters like Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh in Rang De Basanti were new to them."

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