I needed to keep Priyanka away from Bollywood: Vishal Bhardwaj

Vishal Bhardwaj is all keyed up for the world premiere of 7 Khoon Maaf (Seven Sins Forgiven) at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film opens in the Panorama section today at the Friedrichstadtpalast, a grand cinema that seats almost 2,000.

“I am very happy to return to the Berlin film festival seven years after Maqbool was shown here,” says Bhardwaj. “When I ate alone at an Indian restaurant here last time, the restaurant owner asked me if I was a kabootar [pigeon, slang for illegal immigrant] and offered to help me find work. This time I am missing Priyanka [Chopra] here, but she’s been busy promoting the film in India and one of us had to be back home.”

Bhardwaj is here with a cast and crew of nine, including Annu Kapoor, Vivaan Asad Shah, and co-screenwriter Matthew Robbins.

Vivaan is Naseeruddin Shah’s son, in his debut feature. Both father and son play lovers of Susanna, played by Chopra. The film is shot by Ranjan Palit.

Bhardwaj is comfortable breaking the rules of Bollywood for his art: he has a strong female protagonist carry the film on her shoulders.

Says the filmmaker, “Initially, producers asked me to have a husband kill seven wives. But women are much stronger than men, and men look for this strength in women. There’s black humour with these seven specimen husbands, and it was very interesting for me to get them killed.”

More daringly, the film’s climax has an extraordinary scene in which Chopra, as a Christian nun, dances with Jesus Christ — but both of them do the whirling dance of Sufism. It is an indelible, richly resonant image of Indian cinema that unites the great religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, and their most precious elements — spirituality, surrender and ecstasy — without saying a word.

“I must credit screenwriter Matthew Robbins for that scene,” admits Bhardwaj. “He explained that in Christianity, when a woman becomes a nun, she is marrying Jesus. I did not know this before. So we made Jesus her seventh husband — who else can you marry after Jesus? I am expecting strong opinions, but it is not intended to offend anyone, as the scene is one of redemption.”

He continues, “People in India are becoming very intolerant about religion. In our heads we had already gone to the courts and to jail when approaching the censor board [Central Board of Film Certification]. We were very surprised and delighted when they passed it [though for adults only] without a single cut.

"One day before, producer Ronnie Screwvala of UTV was so scared, he suggested that we cut the last scene, but I thought we should have the guts to stand by it. There were four women and one man on the censor committee, and only the man had all the objections. The women told him to shut up. I could sense that the women were choked, they had a lump in their throats. I think I will have a strong female audience for this film.”

Commenting on his choice of Priyanka Chopra, Bhardwaj said, “I hadn’t seen a lot of her films, only parts of them. But when we met, I realised she is intelligent, hungry for good work, and willing to take risks.

"I needed an actress who could trust me, work hard and devote total time. And I needed to keep her away from Bollywood for 3-4 months.”

Wieland Speck, director of the Panorama section presenting the film, says, “It is thrilling and exciting for us to present three India-related films in Panorama — 7 Khoon Maaf, Q's film Gandu and Phil Cox’s documentary The Bengali Detective.

"7 Khoon Maaf is much more than a Bollywood film, with a strong female character that reminds me of Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and even though we don’t get all the political and social issues in the West, the film works fine for us.”

Meenakshi Shedde is India consultant to the Berlin, Locarno and Amsterdam film festivals and curator to international festivals worldwide. She can be contacted at meenakshishedde@gmail.com