It has been four years since Kanu Behl made a sparkling debut with Titli. The intense, grim, realistically-shot film, set in the backdrop of Delhi’s dark underbelly, was rated one of the best Hindi films of 2015.
Behl, however, hasn’t directed a film after that. “I am in no hurry, but I will soon start my next feature,” he says on the sidelines of the Kerala Literature Festival held recently in Kozhikode, where he was participating in a session on Bollywood.
The new film, titled Agra, is about a young man exploring his sexuality. “I know the subject might still be taboo for Bollywood, but I want to make the kind of films that I truly believe in,” says Behl. “Yes, there has been a fairly long interval after Titli, but it has never been my intention to make a film every year.”
He has recently made a short film though, titled Binnu Ka Sapna. “It is about what happens inside the mind of a young man,” he says. “I made it without any dialogues at all though it is 32 minutes long. There is only the voice-over.”
Before that, he had written the script of Love, Sex aur Dhoka, which was dire cted by Dibakar Banerjee. “That was more of a one-off thing,” he says. “When it comes to my film, I like to write the script or be a part of the process. I am comfortable being a writer-director.”
It is not easy however being the director of independent films, outside the star system, he admits. “For directors like me it is always a struggle,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether you have proved yourself with your previous films. It is always like making your first film.”
He, however, sees some light at the end of the tunnel. “Thankfully, content-driven films have started doing well of late,” he says. “And we have also seen this past year at least three films featuring superstars flopping at the box office. I don’t think any film that is weak in content will be lapped up by the audiences any longer. The image of a star alone might not be enough.”
Behl is also happy to find that the online platform for films is growing fast in the country. “It may be too early to say whether it would revolutionise our cinema; remember we had felt the same with the television back in the 80s,” he says. “But there is no doubt about the fact that the online companies like Hotstar, Amazon and Netflix offer a new platform for the filmmakers. I too would be making a web series soon.”
An admirer of Stanly Kubrick (“all his films are among my favourites”), he is impressed by the some of the new films coming out of Malayalam. “I thought Sanal Sasidharan’s Sexy Durga was a fine film,” he says. “My all-time favourite Malayalam film would be Elipathayam. We are all familiar with Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s films, of course, and Elipathayam, I felt, was brilliant.”