Photograph the New Film by Writer/Director Ritesh Batra Is a Batra Was Born in Mumbai in 1979 to a Middle Class Romantic Drama About a Mumbai Photographer, Family

by Philip Raby India, USA, Germany | 2019 | 109m | 15 | subtitles Director: Ritesh Batra Starring: Sanya Malhotra, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Farrukh Jaffar

Plus: Insecurity Questions | Behnam Taheri, Gideon Beresford | UK | 5m

Photograph The new film by writer/director Ritesh Batra is a Batra was born in Mumbai in 1979 to a middle class romantic drama about a Mumbai photographer, family. After finishing high school he moved to the Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), whose grandmother US, where he went to university in Iowa, started pressures him to get married, so he fakes a working at Deloitte, then left to go back to college relationship with a shy younger woman, Miloni in New York because of his ambition to become a (Sanya Malhotra), whose photograph he happened filmmaker. He also dropped out of film school, and to take. concentrated on making short films. His third short, Café Regular, Cairo (2012), was shown at 40 ‘This kind of relationship is pretty much a fairy tale,’ festivals and won a number of awards. On the back Batra told Filmmaker Magazine. ‘The interaction of its success, he returned to India to make a between these two characters in real life would documentary about the peculiar system of midday usually be, “How much does that cost?” and food delivery, which developed into his first “Here’s the change.” And that’s where it would feature, The Lunchbox (2013). It was a hit both in end.’ His writing process, therefore, was about Batra’s home country and across the wider world, ‘trying to come up with something that feels including the UK. plausible even knowing that it never happens in real life.’ Batra’s next two films, both released in 2017, saw a change of pace and setting. The first was The He also aimed to give the movie a ‘timeless’ feel, Sense of an Ending, a UK-set mystery based on not tied to a specific time period. ‘I try consciously Julian Barnes’s award-winning novel, which to keep certain things out,’ he told MovieMaker. ‘I received respectful reviews but was not a box feel movies have a way of becoming timeless and office success. The second they have to live beyond five years or 10 years for was an American people to pick them up again. It’s not the question romantic drama for of making them dated or not dated but making Netflix, Our Souls at Night, them as timeless as they can be.’ which was similarly well

Photograph

reviewed. Photograph marks a return to the style MovieMaker, ‘and then when I met Sanya, I and pacing that made The Lunchbox so popular. thought, let’s make this internal ... She has a very interesting quality. She’s a very shy person in real Nawazuddin Siddiqui appeared in a supporting life and that was great for the movie.’ role in The Lunchbox and is an award-winning actor in Bollywood movies, where his credits Altogether, Photograph is ‘a languorous love include two-part crime epic Gangs of Wasseypur letter to Mumbai that plays with cinematic

(2012). Sanya Malhotra may have fewer credits, but conventions’ (Rebecca Harrison, The Afternoon she has already played leading roles in several Show), whose ‘real charm lies in moments of Bollywood films, and Batra rewrote Photograph for silences and melancholy that flow like poetry’ – her. ‘In the original script the [lead female] Shikhar Verma, High On Film. character had a physical disability,’ he told

Afghanistan, 1989: teenager Qodratollah is selling cinema the festival. These will be shown monthly (from January to tickets at an inflated price when he is snagged by the police May and September to December) at the stylish Walcot and taken to an orphanage-cum-borstal. Our hero realises his House, with an optional movie-themed dinner after the film. only chance is to form alliances if he doesn’t want to be bullied into submission. All the while, his passion for FilmBath FilmClub is a wonderful opportunity to watch Bollywood films allows him to escape into an imaginary world mind-expanding films together and then have the space where his fantasies come true as musical numbers. Writer- and time to talk about the film afterwards. director Shahrbanoo Sadat’s second feature is part of a planned five-film series inspired by her friend’s diaries. For more information, visit filmbath.org.uk/filmclub