'My Whole Career Has Been Built Upon Rejection, But I Never Give Up'

National award-winning director Hansal Mehta talks about this happy, hectic time, the joys of film-ma­king and working with actors such as Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao.

- Prachi Pinglay

National award-winning director Hansal Mehta talks to Prachi Pinglay-Plumber about this happy, hectic time, the joys of film-ma­king and working with actors such as Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao. Two of his recent films—Simran, starring Kangana, and Omerta, premi­ered at the Toronto International Film Festival—see the director dabbling with very diverse themes for storytelling.

Omerta, which premiered at TIFF, seems very different, dark…  

Omerta was completed much before Simran. It is a happy but tight coincidence that Omerta premiered just four days before Simran.Though, it’s not a coincidence that TIFF picked 9/11 for the world premiere. Omerta is also a departure of sorts because it is a political thriller. It is a genre that I haven’t dealt with. It’s based on a true story, based on Omar Sheikh, allegedly the murderer of journalist Daniel Pearl. It’s a 96-97 minute roller-coaster and it traverses a whole world—Pakistan, Afghanistan, London, Old Delhi. My tagline for the film is ‘Brief history of terrorism’—from when it first started, with the Bosnia genocide in 1992, up to the present.

Were you careful or cautious while doing this film?  

I am never careful. Omerta is the most carefree film I have made. I started working on it in 2005. The story idea came from my friend—well-known actor Mukul Dev. I got obsessed with it. But at that time I had somehow dived into that semi-mainstream film zone of making mainstream films without big stars. They were half-baked attempts. I made all those films thinking they will help me make Omerta, but that never happened. In fact