Iram Parveen Bilal's Bollywood connection

This evening, when Iram Parveen  Bilal’s movie Josh (Against The Grain) is screened at the 14th Mumbai Film Festival, MAMI, it will be life coming a full circle for the engineer- turned-filmmaker. “I have grown up watching Bollywood films and so, there’s lots of nostalgia associated with being in Mumbai,” says Iram. Josh is Iram’s first attempt at directing a commercial, full-length movie and is also the only Pakistani movie to be screened at the 14th edition of the film festival.

For starters, we wonder why an award-winning short filmmaker like her made the switch to directing an independent feature film. “I wanted to do a film with a bigger ensemble; one that would have a wider appeal. I sometimes wonder, though, if it was a foolish thing to do because of all the work you have to do,” she ponders loudly with a smile.

So, what came first — the story or the idea to make a feature film? “The story came first,” is Iram’s instantaneous reply. Iram elaborates, “The film’s story essentially was inspired by Parveen Saeed, who runs Khana Ghar (a soup kitchen program that offers meals at subsidised rates for Karachi’s poor).” “Parveen was a character in a documentary on Benazir Bhutto I’d worked on and I remember getting inspired to do a bigger film, one that focussed on her and the programme even as it talks about issues  like class separation, feudalism, et al.”

Now, in a country that’s today synonymous with extremism, shooting an independent film must have been, to put it lightly, a challenge. Iram doesn’t deny it. Instead, recalling the experience she says, “We had instances where the political party of that particular locality would try to take control over the shooting. And there were a few areas where the crowd was antagonistic. I remember this one time when my camera guy told me that we had to wrap a shoot in exactly three takes or else men from the neighbourhood were ready to attack us...” But she shrugs it off saying, “On the whole it was the usual shooting experience.”

Getting back to the film festival, quiz her on what she’d want the Indian audiences to take away from watching the film and pat comes the reply, “I hope the film gives them a 3D perspective of life in Pakistan, one that makes them realise how similar we all are. I also hope the film inspires them realise that if you stand together, nothing can come in your way.” Moving on, Iram shares her future plans. For one, she’s hoping her film gets selected for screening at the Sundance film festival. Then there’s a script she’d written long ago with Shah Rukh Khan in mind. “I am hoping to approach him,” she reveals with candour but before all that, there’s one important job left: namely, figuring a way out to get the distributors in her country to release Josh. “The distributors are strict about distribution rights for independent movies and that’s the biggest challenge for Pakistani filmmakers today,” she rues.

She soon perks up, however, and, changing tracks, cites how intrinsically connected she is to Bollywood and Mumbai. “When I turned filmmaker, my father told me he was not surprised saying it was in my genes,” she recounts and adds,” My grandfather had apparently come to Mumbai to become a movie star but he didn’t get lucky. And today, I am in the same city screening my film!” Life, as we told you earlier, has come a full circle for Iram Parveen Bilal..