Dheer Momaya, Sakshi Khanna and Daria Ghai set up a production house to bring out realistic cinema

They must have been barely 12-13 years old, when Dheer Momaya and Sakshi Khanna (late Vinod Khanna’s son), became friends. “We bonded over our love for movies. Ever since I can remember, we have been watching a film a day,” reveals Dheer with a laugh. It was this love for cinema that made them look towards production as a career. “Initially, we produced some television commercials, music videos, and digital content, post which we set up our production house, Jugaad Motion Pictures,” he says. Somewhere along the way, Ukrainian director, Daria Ghai joined them as a partner and the trio now have an interesting lineup of films to offer.

Teen Aur Aadha, their first feature, is unique in the way the 121 minutes long film has been shot. “We shot the film in three long takes, which as you can imagine, was a logistical nightmare,” reveals Dheer. It’s the story of a house, which 50 years ago, was a school, becomes a brothel 20 years later and in the current scenario, is an apartment owned by an old couple. “It’s a relationship drama that plays out in these three stories,” he says. They are planning to send the film to a couple of film festivals. The other film they are excited about is Namdeo Bhau, the story of a 65-year-old Maharashtrian driver, who is completely fried with the sounds around him. “He takes off on a journey to a place called Silent Valley and on the way, meets a 12-year-old boy, who is heading in the same direction for his own reasons,” Dheer adds. In the pipeline is an Indo-Italian production, a Gujarati film, a Telugu movie and also two Bollywood projects. “All our stories have deep-rooted realistic settings, but they are far from preachy,” he says.

One of the highlights of their movies is that they have picked up a lot of non-actors to be a part of them. For Teen Aur Aadha, they picked 12-year-old Arya Dave and for Namdeo Bhau, they have actually cast a real 65-year-old Maharashtrian driver to play the lead role. “The way we work, we want time and commitment from our actors, which bigger stars might not be able to give. Secondly, we want to give new people a chance and to give ourselves a chance to work and mould non-professional actors into performers, the way we see them,” he adds.