Anurag Kashyap converted short film into `Aiyyaa`

Mumbai: Anurag Kashyap liked director Sachin Kundalkar`s short movie so much that he decided to turn it into a feature film ‘Aiyaa’.

"I used to do a play `S-S-Sarla` with Sonali Kulkarni and she called me once to show a short film by Sachin Kundalkar and I met him there for the first time. I liked it so much that I said this should be made into a whole feature film," the 39-year-old said here Thursday at the launch of the first look of ‘Aiyaa’. It was on Kundalkar`s insistence, he said, that he decided to cast Rani Mukerji in the lead. "This story began from there and Sachin developed the whole story. I asked him which actress do you want and he said someone like Rani Mukerji. This film has taken a long time to be made with a lot of nurturing, Sachin and Rani have spent two-and-a-half years on the film and the rest of the team," Kashyap said. "Aiyaa" tells the story of a Maharashtrian girl Meenakshi Deshpande who lives in a Bollywood-style fantasy world and tries to woo a Malayali man Surya played by southern actor Prithviraj Sukumaran. The film is slated for an Oct 12 release. IANS