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| Edited By: |Source: PTI |Updated: Nov 21, 2013, 01:44 PM IST
After shuttling between India and the US for decades, filmmaker Mira Nair is returning to her homeland to shoot Reluctant Fundamentalist, a film which she says is her answer to 'Islamophobia' in the West.
"I don't have to look after the family, my son has grown. I am returning to Mumbai from next year on with The Reluctant Fundamentalist that will be shot 50% in India. This is our story and I would be happy to be back here and speak of the tales of the soil," Nair told reporters in Panaji.
The director, who is in Goa to attend a retrospective of her films at the ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI), denied that she was in talks with Shahid Kapur for the lead but admitted that she was considering Ranbir Kapoor along with three other contenders.
"Shahid's name is a rumour not based on facts. I am very much interested in Ranbir Kapoor. I also have three other characters, two from Pakistan and one from England. So I would say there are four contenders for the lead role of Changez. I also have three western roles and I am currently in talks with some Hollywood A-listers but can't announce the name till it is finalised," Nair said.
Mira, who created a trademark style blending the Indian identity with Hollywood in her movies said that Reluctant Fundamentalist, an adaptation of Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid's book of the same name, is her answer to the way West views Islam.
"The film is really a kind of answer. We see these films on Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam war. All these are always told from the American point of view. With this film I have the opportunity to speak about Islam from our point of view, the South Asian point of view. There is so much Islamophobia, myth and illusion about this religion and the way it is spurned and talked about in the western world is something we have to counter," she said about the film which will be shot in India, Chile and New York.
The director said that she is yet to seek permission to shoot in Pakistan but will recreate most of the scenes in Delhi because it is similar to the Pakistani city of Lahore.
"I have not obtained permission yet, I hope to do it someday in Pakistan but I think it will be Delhi as Lahore and Delhi are very similar. The bulk of Lahore scenes in Delhi and few days in Pakistan probably," she said.
The director, who had previously adapted the epic novel Vanity Fair into a film, said that she loves returning to classic literature for stories and then reinterpret it in her own way.
"I go to stories that move me deeply. Adapations are so interesting that they give you a chance what you want to say about the world and the story that you are telling. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is in the form of a monologue between two men in a cafe in old Lahore. I have also put song-dance and marriage and introduced a female character," she said.
Nair's debut feature film, Salaam Bombay released in 1988, won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Nair says that she feels like an "insider and ousider" at the same time in India.
"I have been very rooted to India and yet have lived abroad. I think distance gives me something more. It makes me see things more clearly and sometimes make them more poetic. Distance helps me and also confuses me," she said.
