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It’s the first black-and-white film in 40 years.
I never started out to make a monochrome movie. I first visited Leh in July 2005 and it looked absolutely beautiful—blue skies and water,colourful clothes,the greenery. But as I started making regular trips to plan the movie,over months,I saw the landscape change in front of my eyes. In winters — which is when the movie is set — Ladakh was indeed black and white to bare eyes — white snow and black rock. If my story was set in summer,it would have been colour but I realised the grittiness was more obvious in monochrome.

But you shot in colour.
No one in India seems to be making black-and-white anymore so not much technological advancement has happened on that front. I did my trial shoot in black-and-white stock but the quality was not satisfactory. So we shot in colour,the quality of which was far superior. We then printed it on black-and-white stock. Sadly,India doesn’t even have appropriate labs for that procedure and we had to do it in Los Angeles.

What were the challenges of shooting in sub-zero weather?
The entire unit,including the cast,had to be physically fit to survive -25 degree temperature. This includes the cast,which comprises Danny Denzongpa as Karma – the head of the family – and two young children who play his kids in the film. We had to then transport all our equipment to a location at the height of 12,000 sq ft above sea level. We had to take along special portable washrooms too.

Frozen travelled to nearly 30 international film festivals and won 13 awards. Why a delayed local release?
Sadly,films like mine get classified as festival films. Initially,every producer and distributor I spoke to,turned me away saying that such a film will never see success in India. Finally I invested my own money. Even now,it’s the popular world movies club Enlighten that is distributing Frozen. It’s also their first distribution project.