National Award winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar’s upcoming period drama Indu Sarkar has found itself in trouble with various groups. The director spoke to the Indian Express, and said he’s always had an issue with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).
The Fashion director has had issues with the Censor Board over his previous films and expects the same to happen with Indu Sarkar too. “Regardless of the regime, I have always had a problem with the Censor Board… In Page 3 and Traffic Signal, I showed people taking drugs, and was given a U/A certificate. Both movies got National Awards. Later, I went to them with Fashion, and the leads were shown taking drugs. The Censor Board said, ‘Chop it and take your U/A certificate.’ Why should there be a different yardstick each time, when I am not showing anything that I haven’t shown before? I’m going to have the same problem with Indu Sarkar, with smoking scenes, and the language, I know it. I’ll have to make some cuts because of the pressure. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”
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The 48-year-old director claims that the movie isn’t a biopic of the Gandhis and that it is around 70% fiction and 30% real. “The characters are partly inspired by a lot of real people, and the underground activities that took place during the Emergency. There is a lot of material available on the subject — documentaries, the Shah Commission report, books — and I met several journalists who worked during the Emergency as well. But, our main character is fictitious. — Indu Sarkar, played by Kirti Kulhari, is an orphan and a poetess, and is married to a bureaucrat who works with the authorities; an ideological shift between the two occurs, and she joins the fight against the system. The film is not a biopic,” he signed off.
Indu Sarkar stars Kirti Kulhari, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Anupam Kher in pivotal roles and has been bankrolled by Bharat Shah and Madhur Bhandarkar. The movie is slated for a 28 July release.