Raghubir Yadav returns to Bengali movies

Highlights

• Coming back to Bengali movies after 15 years, character actor Raghubir Yadav says he wants his latest film, based on a real life story, dubbed in Hindi and shown all over the country.
• Yadav said his Atta Aater Bongaon Local (The Bongaon Local train of 8.08 pm) is so realistic in presenting the cold-blooded murder of a teenaged boy trying to save the honour of his sister that he wants it to be seen by an all-India audience.
• "I would like to talk to the makers and producers of the film about its possible country-wide release, if not immediately, but sometime later," he said.
• The actor returned to Bengali cinema 15 years after his role of a simpleton in Damu (1996), under the direction of young filmmaker Debaditya.
• Talking about his role in the Atta Aater Bongaon Local, he said he depicted a very strong character of a rickshaw-puller and admitted he felt very "charged up" while essaying it. "Though it may sound like a cliche, I always feel charged up when I get into the skin of such a role, I try to sense his hardship and become himself", Yadav of Salaam Bombay fame said.
• He said he had tried to perfect the art of paddling a rickshaw for days.
• Yadav, who had seen several films of Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray including Ray's Pather Panchali, Jalsaghar and Apur Sansar, said he was always open to work with new directors including those from Bengal if the script and character appeared interesting.
• "I have heard names like Srijit (Mukherjee). I am a great follower of Rituparno Ghosh, or even 'dada' Buddhadev Dasgupta, all synonymous with Bengal's rich heritage. I would like to work with them," Yadav said about Bengali directors.
• Atta Aater Bongaon Local, he said, has a fantastic script and he is sure the project will be successful.
• Asked about the latest craze for remakes in Bollywood, Yadav said the remakes of Don and Don 2 did not stand a chance against the originals which he dubbed as "cult".
• "The audience cannot be hoodwinked this way. Rather look at films like Three Idiots and Taare Zameen Par of Aamir Khan, these are movies one should look upto," Yadav said.
• He would mark Onir and Sriram Raghavan as among the ones he counted as holding a lot of promise in the Hindi film industry.
• "Also I like the style of filmmaking of Raju Hirani (Munnabhai series) and Vidhu Vinod Chopra and would love to work with them if the proposal appeared significant for me," he said when asked to name a few Bollywood directors he would love to work with.
• Coming back to his latest Bengali film, shortly to be released, he said the film revolved around an incident at Barasat in the northern outskirts of Kolkata a few months back in which a brother was stabbed while trying to save his sister from being molested by goons, triggering a chain of events.
• Popular TV actor Sonali Chowdhury, who has now portrayed the character of the female protagonist for the big screen, said though a film cannot necessarily provide any quick-fix solution to incidents of crime, she was hopeful the audience would identify with the character and her form of protest.
• Asked if she found solidarity with the real life character Rinku das, whose brother was murdered while accompanying his sister on that fateful night, as a woman, Sonali said, "Yes, who would not?"
• Popular Bengali film actors Swastika Mukherjee, Tapas Pal and Rajesh Sharma will be seen in other important roles of the film produced by the Unimas.
• Debaditya Bandyopadhyaya, the director of the film, said he had earlier wanted Raghubir to play a part in my debut film Fight 1:1 but he was not available then.