Aanand L Rai to collaborate with Anurag Kashyap for two movies

Ace filmmaker Anand L Rai, who has always sung praises for director Anurag Kashyap, has roped in the 'Dev D' helmer for two of his upcoming movies for his production house, Colour Yellow Production.

When asked about it, Rai told reporters, “He (Kashyap) is one of my favourite directors. I always wanted to collaborate and do something. Now that we have got an opportunity, we are doing it.” The Raman Raghav 2.0 helmer will reportedly direct two films, one of which would be a small-town love story set in Uttar Pradesh.

To a query on it, Rai said, “It will be better if Anurag tells more about it.” The director was speaking at a special party hosted to celebrate many accolades of Aligarh, including Manoj Bajpayee’s ‘Best performance award’ at 10th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA).

Directed by Hansal Mehta, the film was set in the city of Aligarh and revolved around Professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, a sensitive Marathi language professor, who lost his job and was ostracised for his sexual orientation. Rai said it takes courage for filmmakers to tell a story like that on the big screen.

“Definitely it takes a lot of courage and these are the times where we should tell all these new stories. It’s an opening for us as filmmakers and even audience,” he said. “It’s a growing industry in terms of stories, thinking, so we need these gutsy directors to come up and give us a new beginning,” he said.

When asked why don’t off-beat films work that well at the box office, the 45-year-old “Raanjhanaa” helmer said it is because directors are often scared to narrate gutsy stories.

“The reason is that we directors are a little ‘darpok’ (scared) to tell stories so even the audience are not used to it. The more stories we tell, move forward with guts, the audience will get habitual and movies will work,” he said.