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Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha wants the audience to pay attention to the magic of movies, not the mechanics behind it. The director, who’s gearing up for the release of his latest film Bheed, says much of the online discourse about the machinery behind his upcoming drama is drummed up by “bots” and not genuine cinema watching audience.
After the first promo of Bheed was released, Twitter had a divided reaction, with a section, especially some film trade critics, even dubbing the movie “anti-India”. Soon, the rumour mill went into overdrive with suggestions that producer and presenter Bhushan Kumar had distanced himself from Bheed, with his company’s name T-Series disappearing from posters and social media tags.
In an interview with indianexpress.com, Anubhav Sinha said he’s aware of the online chatter about Bheed and the speculation regarding the changing dynamics of the makers involved, but the filmmaker doesn’t believe it warrants a clarification as it’ll distract from what the film talks about.
When asked if he can throw light around the confusion regarding Bhushan Kumar’s involvement, Sinha told indianexpress.com, “Is the audience asking these questions?” When pointed out that the conversation is happening on Twitter, Sinha said, “They’re not audience.”
The filmmaker further explained, “They aren’t audience at all! Most of them are bots, from one side or the other. I don’t think the audience is interested in this. I don’t think the audience remembers who made Naseeb. I don’t think they know who was the distribution partner of a film.”
Anubhav Sinha said today “content has also become a problem” with a dangerous misconception that the more one writes online, the more popular they’ll get, the more followers they’ll get. “Followers is the biggest fraud of the century. People have to write, and when they read how many likes, retweets they’re getting, they feel important. Nobody on the planet might know who they are but the number of likes make them feel important. Most of the things are done for the virtual numbers. I’m not at all interested in what Twitter is interested in.”
When asked if he means whatever is being written online is baseless, Sinha said, “They might have a basis but they don’t matter. Not to me, not to anybody. I think it’s disservice to the film, to be talking anything else, like the way an engine works. When you go to a theme park and sit on a ride, enjoy the ride, don’t think how it works. That’s another job! If there was anything worth telling, that you should know, I wouldn’t be shy.”
Bheed chronicles the plight of migrants during the Covid-19-induced lockdown of 2020, when lakhs of migrant workers travelled to their home towns from cities. The film, scheduled to release on March 24, stars Rajkummar Rao, Bhumi Pednekar, Dia Mirza, Ashutosh Rana, Kritika Kamra and Kumud Mishra.
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