`Bhooter Bhabishyat` country-wide success overwhelms director

For filmmaker Anik Dutta, the runaway success of his debut movie ‘Bhooter Bhabisyat’ is unexpected.

Kolkata: For filmmaker Anik Dutta, the runaway success of his debut movie ‘Bhooter Bhabisyat’, a comedy which opened at the same time as ‘Kahaani’, is unexpected.

He is yet to comprehend what clicked in the movie - the funny dialogues, parodies of well-known songs or funny situations. The film is not only showing to packed houses all over Bengal for the last over two months, but has also opened in multiplexes in tinsel town Mumbai and other metros. "The fact that legendary film director Mrinal Sen has not only liked it, but has also taken the trouble to tell me about his feelings over the phone is really something to talk about," said an overwhelmed Dutta, a successful ad film-maker, said. "In retrospect, I find that some of the shots have been taken in haste. The audience has not noticed some of the imperfections in the movie," Dutta candidly said. About the funny dialogues, Dutta agreed to the suggestion that they could have been the influence of growing up in an environment peopled by the likes of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha and characterised by the group theatre movement of the 70s. "Apart from me, assistant director Debabrata Roy also equally contributed in writing the sharp dialogues and I have heard many people are going to theatres for the second or third time," he said. About casting ‘Kahaani’ star Parambrata Chatterjee in the film, Dutta said, "When I had approached Param we did not know that he would be cast opposite Vidya Balan in Sujoy (Ghosh)`s film. And as there were some date problems with Param as the Kahaani shoot got extended, we had even thought of replacing him at the last moment. But finally Param could squeeze out time to give us date and things got worked out," said the director. "Now one cannot think about anybody else but Param in the role of the docu-maker, hunting for a location for his film." Asked if back-to-back releases of the two films helped ‘Bhooter Bhabishyat’, Dutta said "no way". "We had no hand in Kahaani`s release and vice-versa perhaps and Param just happened to be the common factor." Dutta explained that his film may be a comedy basically, but it has subtle social comments too, like when it speaks about the loss of heritage buildings in the name of development and the gradual withering of cultural values in the society. Riding high on the success of his debut film, Dutta has readied two other feature film scripts which has found takers already. PTI