To Hear Zaira’s Voice Was My Best Gift: Shonali Bose
‘The Sky is Pink’ director spoke to us about her film, life and more.
The Quint met with director Shonali Bose at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival. Bose’s upcoming The Sky is Pink, which stars Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar, and Zaira Wasim, had its world premiere at the TIFF. In the interview, Bose opens up about working with Priyanka, her relationship with Zaira and more.
Tell us about The Sky is Pink. Because you know, the films that you’ve been making, they’re always so emotionally charged. And this story in particular, of Aisha Chaudhary, talk us through the process of how you decided to say the story.
It’s not a story about Aisha Chaudhary. In fact, she is the storyteller. It’s a film about Aditi and Niren Chaudhary, her parents. And that was this really interesting choice. Basically, Aditi and Niren approached me. I didn’t know them at all to do a film about their daughter. And the reason they did that is, it was Aisha’s dying wish to see my previous film Margarita With a Straw.
Has the family seen the film, Shonali? What has their reaction been?
The family’s read every draft and they watched the rough cut. None of us have actually seen the beautiful finished cut. You’ve seen it before us. Farhan hasn’t even seen it. We’re going to watch it all tomorrow at our world premiere. The reason is that when I say the full finished cut I mean like it was picture lock, but this process of making a print is like when the color timing happens. So it looks like a beautiful print and all the sound mix and everything’s married together. I had to already leave for TIFF. You know the DCP’s just finished like late last night and uploaded in time for the press to watch it.
Like you yourself said, this is a Shonali Bose film with stars and Priyanka Chopra. We’ve seen her in Quantico and you know, the last film was this huge canvas of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. How starry is she? Did you have to kind of, you know, kind of decide how you wanted to deal with her. How was it working with her, and how different are your styles?
So it was really challenging and a learning experience for me. But she wasn’t starry in that sense. As in, we had a lot of issues around time, because she has so many things going on, she was getting married till five days before. That itself showed that she’s non-starry.
Watch the video for the full interview!
Video Editor: Ashish MacCune
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