Divyenndu and Radhika Apte‘s film Saali Mohabbat recently had its world premiere at the Indian International Film Festival (IFFI) in Goa. In an exclusive conversation with NDTV, Divyenndu talked about his love for arthouse cinema. The actor revealed that he always planned to arthouse films after passing out from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) but somehow ended up doing commercial movies. He said, “I had always planned that after graduating from FTII, I would do arthouse, I would have nothing to do with so-called “commercial cinema” but as luck had it I started out with a commercial film Pyaar Ka Punchnama, second film Chashme Baddoor with David Dhawan, you can’t get more commercial than this. Still, my heart always stops at these arthouse films and stories.”
Divyenndu added that today there is not much difference between parallel and commercial cinema as the audience cares more about the content than the actors who are featured in the project. He said, “I think now the lines also have been blurred between arthouse and commercial cinema. Today, the audience is very smart. When they watch a trailer and see something about a film, they decide at that moment if they will watch that movie or not. They don’t care who is the star in the film, on which platform it will be released, or the language of the movie. They watch the trailer and based on the merit, they decide if they want to watch the film or not.”
Talking about his process of selecting films, the actor said, “I sign the films I believe that I would like to watch on screen. Then there are also other factors like who is backing the project or who is directing. Gone are the days when you could just do a film based on emotions or the story, filmmaking is a collective effort and everyone has to come together to make a film work.”
Produced by fashion designer Manish Malhotra, Saali Mohabbat marks Tisca Chopra’s directorial debut. In addition to Radhika Apte and Divyenndu, Saali Mohabbat also features Anshumaan Pushkar, Sauraseni Maitra, Sharat Saxena and Anurag Kashyap in pivotal roles.