Directorwho beat Lagaan to Oscar set to shoot in India

Tanovic, whose first film won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film for his 2001 movie, spent almost a month here. His next movie is based on a “true story” based in Pakistan, made in English. Since it is not easy to shoot in Pakistan, he is planning to shoot in India. “Locations in and around Punjab are being considered as they are similar to the Pakistani countryside,” a source said.

E-mails and phone calls to Tanovic’s agent did not elicit response and sources explained the director was keen to keep the project “under wraps.”

The shooting schedule is still to be firmed up but it will be later this year. However, going by Tanovic’s standards, he will be here and gone in a jiffy. His Oscar-winning effort, No Man’s Land, was written in 10 days, shot within a month and cut in a week—and on a budget of just $ 1 million.

Tanovic, who was the Bosnian army’s official cameraman in the Balkan war, worked closely with the legendary Polish director and screenwriter, late Krzysztof Kieslowski, and was considered his protégé. In fact, Hell, Tanovic’s last effort, is part of Kieslowski’s unfinished trilogy based on Dante’s Divine Comedy —(Heaven, Hell and Purgatory). Tanovic, 38, who finds Hollywood terrifying, is now based in Paris because only French law guarantees his right to the final cut. The filmmaker has already begun casting for the film. While there would be a slew of Indian actors in the supporting cast, the lead role will be done by Sacha Dhawan, the first British Asian to win the Royal Television Society Awards.

Fimmaker Anurag Kashyap, who has a history of films not getting released, quotes what the Bosnian director, who was studying at the Sarajevo Film Academy in 1992 when the war broke out, had told him, in his blog: “I would rather make an unreleased film that said something than a blockbuster that said nothing.”