Shekhar Kapur gestures during a a press conference in New Delhi on Monday.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Internationally-acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur on Monday said he will be starting the shooting of a sequel to f his debut film Masoom in February-March next year and is interested to re-release the 1983 film.
The sequel will have Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah playing their original role while Manoj Bajpayee is expected to add to the star power in Masoom-2. Kapur's daughter Kaveri will also essay a role in the movie.
Kapur's debut film Masoom (The Innocent) was based on Erich Segal's Man, Woman and Child, which was also adapted into Malayalam as Olangal directed by Balu Mahendra.
Masoom is a film about a family which starts to crumble when the wife discovers that her husband has a child from a previous relationship, who has come looking for his father.
"I will start shooting for Masoom 2 in February-March 2025. The script is ready. In fact, I was flying in from Dubai yesterday and I left the script behind on my seat. I was very scared but it came back to me. The flight attendant wrote a note saying Masoom was such a nice film, this one too would be as nice," he said.
"A script that was lost comes back, it's something predestined. It will be a different storyline but will have the same values," Kapur, who is also the Director of IFFI 2024, said on the sidelines of the curtain raiser press conference of the 55th International Film Festival of India (IFFI).
To a question at the press conference on which film he would like to re-release, he said he would like to see his debut film on the screens once again.
"I would re-release Masoom. I had never directed a film before. I hadn't learnt filmmaking. I was a Chartered Accountant. So I really want to know how I made that movie. I have no idea. That to me is the greatest lesson of film making. To not know is the greatest three words of creativity," he said.
To a comparison of IFFI with the Cannes Film Festival, he said, "if we regard our films as Indian and listen to what our audiences have to say and not just listen to what the filmmakers have to say, then we will become much bigger than Cannes. It's not that difficult to become bigger than Cannes. We must try and one day, we will become bigger than Cannes."
On censorship of OTT content, he referred to Iranian filmmakers battling rules and regulations through creativity and said, "censorship sometimes sharpens the skills of a filmmaker... You have to fight for something you believe in."