More than language, friendship between director and actor is important: Beyond the Clouds director Majid Majidi

Kolkata: Iranian director Majid Majidi, whose debut Indian film Beyond the Clouds is slated to hit the theaters on 20 April, feels that more than the language, the friendship between a director and an actor is important.   

The acclaimed director was present at an event yesterday (13 April 2018) which was hosted by SVF in Kolkata. He was here to promote his film Beyond the Clouds which features Indian actors Ishaan Khatter and Malavika Mohanan in the lead roles. At the ‘meet & greet session’, Malavika was also present. Majidi was accompanied by a translator.

Bengali filmmaker Pratim D. Gupta wanted to know how difficult it was for Majidi to direct actors who were not acquainted with his language. Majidi shared, “What is very important is friendship between the director and the actor; when you are friends then language is not something very important. I try to make them feel like a family. That emotion is very important. This feeling makes everything much, much better.”     

Speaking about the significance of casting for a film, he said to media, “Casting is one of the important parts of a film. Since I write my own scripts, I remain aware of whom to cast and I immediately start looking out for them. It’s not important whether you are a professional actor or a new comer; what matters is the actor should fit the character. Like my other films, we recruited a team for casting. It took a long time to find the proper faces for the characters.  I had this chance to work with a proper (casting) team.”  

Majidi further shared that finding the face for the character of Taara was little difficult.  

“It was little difficult to get the actor for the character (of Taara) as I was searching for a face which looked completely Indian at the first look,” said the director who finally found his character in the face of Malavika.

Majid Majidi, who used to be a theatre actor before he turned into a director, shared that his theatre experience has helped him with his directorial ventures and stressed that the coaching of actors is important.

He said, “I started art with theatre then started acting (in films) and then ventured into direction. I continued my experiment with cinema. So my experience of theatre and then acting (in cinema) has helped me to see how much an actor should act.”

“It is important for a director to guide the actors about how much they should act. (Due to the experience) I know how to measure this acting,” added the director.

The upcoming Bollywood film Beyond the Clouds focuses on the bond between siblings. It is said to be the grown-up version of Majidi's previous film Children of Heaven.

Besides Pratim D. Gupta, the event was graced by other prominent Bengali filmmakers like Goutam Ghose, Anjan Dutt, Arindam Sil, and Srijit Mukherji.