Post the huge success of Irrfan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer The Lunchbox in 2013, filmmaker Ritesh Batra got caught up in making the Robert Redford-starrer Our Souls at Night and the British film The Sense of an Ending. Now, Batra is back on home turf with Photograph featuring Nawazuddin Siddique and Sanya Malhotra in the lead.
Photograph is the bitter sweet story which revolves around a street photographer in Mumbai, who when pressurised to marry by his grandmom, convinces a stranger to pose as his fiancée. The two develop a special connection between them that then transforms their lives in unexpected ways.
Speaking about Nawaz and Sanya coming together for the first time, Ritesh says, “Nawaz has a real innocence about him that he brings to the character, and Sanya has a way of saying things without words, she’s a very meticulous and detailed performer. So they fit these parts, I was lucky to find them.”
While Nawaz plays the street photographer from Dharavi in Photograph, Sanya is essaying the role of an introvert college girl. About their chemisry Ritesh says, “The movie is really about the corners of our heart that only others can help us find, and these two actors do a wonderful job of revealing and keeping things from us.”
Ritesh Batra’s Photograph premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year and it’s also a part of the Berlin Film Festival of 2019.
Written and directed by Ritesh Batra, Photograph is presented by Amazon Studious in association with The Match Factory and is slated to release in India on 8 March 2019.
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