Cannes comes as a big surprise: Amit Kumar

Amit Kumar’s directorial debut Monsoon Shootout, a dark edgy thriller about a cop and a gangster battling it out in the rain-drenched Mumbai city, has got selected for a screening at the 66th Cannes Film festival. Amit stuns you by revealing that the film’s genesis and evolution has taken 9 years. “We started developing the film in 2004.We finishing scripting in 2008 and then we shot the film. Funnily I never got frustrated by the delay. I crawled along and hoped something good would come of it.” And the young director is more dazed than dazzled. “My film is still not ready. I’m still mixing it. We sent an unprepared version earlier during this year. Beyond that I did nothing for it to get this honour. To be honest I had no hope of my film securing this honour. Somehow you expect such things to happen to bigger films. I guess I am just lucky. Of course we’ve all worked hard on Monsoon Shootout. But I did nothing for my film to get to Cannes.” Prior to Monsoon Shootout Amit made a short-film entitled The Bypass starring Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. “It was Asif Kapadia who submitted the short-film for a British film competition. We won. That’s how my story began,” says the director. Amit who is originally from Uttar Pradesh, is grateful to the people who put their trust in the film. “It wasn’t easy to get producers. But Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga believed in our film blindly, not caring about where it went.” Amit actually completes the film in the next two weeks. “If you ask me about my plans I don’t know. The Cannes selection has happened too suddenly. I was not prepared for this. I’ll now have to complete the entire post-production and start thinking about what to do.” We jokingly bring up the clothes needed for the red carpet. Amit gets thoughtful. “I guess I’d need a tuxedo. I had got one tailored when The Bypass was screened. But I don’t think that would fit me now. At the moment I am focusing on completing the post-production work.”