Sujoy Ghosh: No stranger to making screen news

Sujoy Ghosh recently quit as chairman of the jury at the IFFI, after the information and broadcasting ministry struck down two films on the list given by the panel

When not directing films or heading festival juries (and resigning in protest), Sujoy Ghosh — writer, director, producer, actor — can be found chatting with friends over coffee in the Mumbai suburbs of Khar or Bandra. 

He recently made news on quitting as chairman of the jury at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), after the information and broadcasting ministry struck down two films on the list given by the panel. 

Not that he is a stranger to being in the news. He arrived at the scene with Jhankar Beats, critically acclaimed surprise hit of 2003. After that, he was again in the news but for failure, of consecutive films, Home Delivery: Aapko…Ghar Tak (2005) and Aladin (2009). In 2012, though, the tide was  again in his favour, as Vidya Balan starrer Kahaani impressed critics and audiences alike. 

He wasn’t born into films but has to his credit one of the most acclaimed thrillers of the past decade. Ghosh, engineer and MBA by education, and a former journalist, took the plunge into films in 1999. Born in Kolkata, he spent the formative years between the ‘City of Joy’ and London. He completed his education from Manchester University and went on to head the media division for Reuters in South Asia. 

Ghosh says he considers Satyajit Ray his ‘school’. He tries, he says, to emulate the legendary film maker in the essence of his work, whether it is sending a message through an entertaining film or taking a stand on issues. This reflects in the lens through which he sees genres or trends. For example, he is not a fan of biopics as a film maker and finds the personal lives of personalities he likes uninspiring matter for films. He prefers to ‘focus on the work’. An example of this is his tribute to music director R D Burman in the debut feature film, Jhankar Beats. 

The music director, fondly called Panchamda, is omnipresent in the film, with a lot of the music influenced by his style as well. However, it is not a retelling of his life story or even the journey as an artiste. Similarly, Ghosh does not see sequels in the same way as most others. Calling Kahaani a ‘genre’, he explains that 2016’s Kahaani 2 is the story of another Durga (the lead character). 

Ghosh has been candid about success and failures and has maintained that, “a director is as successful as his last film”. Criticism has not stopped him from experimenting. He has recently shifted focus to short films. Ghosh was the force behind 2015’s hit short film, Ahalya, with Radhika Apte and Soumitra Chatterjee in pivotal roles. The 14-minute film is set in contemporary Kolkata and narrates an episode from the Ramayana, about the fate of an apsara, a maharishi and the God of rain, Indra, sealed by a curse. The film was appreciated by critics and viewers. His interest in short films was sparked by the desire to ‘learn digital media’, since he figures that’s where the future is. While he intends to make more feature films for celluloid, he is currently focusing on short films and web-series for the digital platform. His next venture is a retelling of sorts of Satyajit Ray’s Anukul. Ghosh is also working on a web-series named Suspect X, adaptation of a Japanese novel.