Hope Floats

Filmmaker Kunal Deshmukh is not happy with the strike. It’s come down to an ego clash,and the longer it persists,the more it affects his film. “Even if they call it off,there’ll be a deluge of film releases every Friday,and then,we’ll all be fighting for space,shelf life,TV spot,and to be visible,we’ll have to pump in more money; which basically means we’re back in the same ol’ loop,” after Jannat,Deshmukh’s ready with his next,Tum Mile,a love story set against the drowning backdrop of the 2005 Mumbai floods. Marooned on flooded Mumbai streets that paralysed the city,Deshmukh vividly recalls the horrific eight hours. The floods,he says,forced him to see things from a whole new perspective. “I had approached Vishesh Films with this project first,but it required a lot of money and technical expertise and hence,got postponed.” Post Jannat,Kunal got the chance,and the first thing he did was hunt for the perfect set. “The special effects team were clear – you cannot create VFX water for it bounces off structures and people,and so,we had to recreate a 300 feet by 100 feet set resembling Goregaon,Film City and the Airport in an iron scrapyard in Mumbai,” Kunal gets into the next to impossible task of portraying the chaos of incessant rain,and its logistics – from setting a water cycle,strong walls to hold it,filtering it every second day to avoid contamination,checking entry and exit points to waterproofing sockets,wired,equipment,it took them a month to get it right. “All thanks to art director Rajat Potdar,” Kunal also took eight months to get the script right. “We had to,because floods are the catalyst. The film is a love story,and as it’s a recent event,people will expect a certain scale,and so,we had to make it look true to life.” Tum Mile releases in July and stars Emraan Hashmi and Soha Ali Khan who meet during the floods. While Emraan’s a struggling painter,Soha Ali Khan is a magazine editor.

“The film’s taken a year and half of my life,and for me,the whole process is a love affair. Films are like that,you need to make them from the heart,the head should never interfere,” he crosses his fingers for this to last.