Screen Presence

The last time we saw Palekar on screen,he was a villain in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Khamosh in 1985. “Movie making and subjects have evolved since then and I opted to contribute to cinema by making films instead,” he adds. Samaantar follows an ageing couple played by Palekar and Sharmila Tagore who meet again after a long gap. “Early in life,they shared a loving relationship. Then,cruel twists of fate separated them for 30 years,” explains Gokhale.

Palekar,whose last Marathi film was Anahat,which he directed in 2003,was impressed by the range of character and theme in Samaantar. “My character Keshav Vaze is an industrialist who comes from a small village and makes it big. But every day after he returns home,he sits on a rocking chair and contemplates about the years gone by. This was a character I had wanted to explore in an understated way,” explains Palekar. Samaantar has received the Audience Award at the Beyond Bollywood Film Festival in Stuttgart,Germany,this year. “I am not sure whether this film would have the same impact had it been made in Hindi,” says Gokhale.

Even as they prepare for the big screen release of the film,another project is in the pipeline — the couple’s next project Dumkata,a children’s film in Hindi,which will release later this year.