Mumbai: The audience may love Anurag Kashyap’s two-part magnum opus Gangs of Wasseypur but Anurag, the poster boy of independent films, feels that this film’ is the bane of his existence.
The auteur recently graced the Cannes premiere of his film Kennedy where it received an 8-minute standing ovation.
Talking about the experience of having Kennedy screened at Grand Theatre Lumiere in the midnight screening section, Kashyap made a self-deprecating joke mentioning his last film Almost ‘Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat’.
He told Brut India: “It was really overwhelming, it’s my first film at Theatre Lumiere with 2500 people appreciating the film. The numbers were more than the entire audience that saw my last film ‘Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat’. I broke that entire record in one screening.”
He further spoke about Gangs of Wasseypur which is perhaps his most successful film.
He said: “Gangs of Wasseypur is the bane of my life. I hate ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ because everybody expects me to keep making the same kind of films which I’m never going to do again in my life. I want to make different kinds of films.”
He then said that it’s this pursuit of making different films that gave birth to Black Friday, Dev.D and even Gangs of Wasseypur.
“Gangs of Wasseypur is always available on Netflix. I want to move forward and make more cinema-like for me ‘Kennedy’ is more personal.” Kennedy stars Sunny Leone, Rahul Bhat and Abhilash Thapliyal.
Kashyap also spoke about why he chose to cast Sunny for the film. He told Film Companion: “I swear I have never seen her films, ever. I have seen her interviews. There is a certain sadness in her eyes. There has been a life in the past. I needed a woman over 40, who is sexualised by men around her, men who are in their 50s and 60s.”
He concluded by saying: “I don’t need to see the act of sex and all that. I need to see this woman who is also dealing with it, also handling it, also using it all in order to survive and navigate. In Sunny, I found a woman who came with all those things inbuilt.”