'I DO HAVE AN AUDIENCE IN MIND-ME'

With his new film Despatch, which had its India premiere at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival this year and is streaming soon on ZEE5, Kanu Behl decides to steer clear of genre tropes.

- SHREYAS PANDE

With his new film Despatch, which had its India premiere at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival this year and is streaming soon on ZEE5, Kanu Behl decides to steer clear of genre tropes. His crime journalist Joy (Manoj Bajpayee) is not someone who has the sole goal of uncovering the truth or ensuring justice. Joy doesn't flaunt a badge of idealism. Rather, he is incessantly human, with his own desires and shortcomings. It wasn't smooth for Kanu to arrive at this insight. In 2016, Kanu and his co-writer Ishani Banerjee were immersed in extensive research. This involved reading reports of journalists' deaths, observing the changing nature of media, and speaking to lawyers, scribes, cops and gangsters. That's when they hit a roadblock.

"We realised that you will never really know who did what and why," says Kanu, adding that they were unable to uncover the truth. What they were left with were some questions: "What if you never find out what this journalist was trying to expose?" "Why are journalists in films reduced to being a 'hero' saving the day?" "Why don't we see their human side?" Kanu and Ishani then decided to subvert the idea of a journalist and that of an investigative thriller. The director calls