The upcoming film India Lockdown, which is directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, is certain to stir up emotions in viewers. It demonstrates how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the people of India. It was produced by Pranav Jain's P J Motions Pictures, Madhur Bhandarkar's Bhandarkar Entertainment, and Jayantilal Gada's PEN Studios. The forthcoming OTT release features Aahana Kumra, Shweta Basu Prasad, Prateik Babbar, Sai Tamhankar, and Prakash Belawadi as the lead actors.
In an exclusive conversation with DNA, Madhur Bhandarkar talked about making India Lockdown and how its concept will touch people’s hearts.
I personally feel that as a filmmaker I have made different different types of cinema from Chandni Bar to my last venture Babli Bouncer which has done fabulously well on OTT platform and has been a family entertainer and now, India Lockdown. Two contrasting projects for me, very different films from each other. India Lockdown, when this idea came to me, it stuck with me when it was written. In 2020, I wrote two scripts, one was Babli Bounder and one was India Lockdown. One got released and one got huge appreciation and success. Me and my writer wrote the whole film in covid. So, I felt it is a subject to be told to the people. When we were stuck up at home, we were all thinking what would happen. Because these things we have never seen globally that how a disease makes the entire world stuck. I felt that there was so much happening and that time I thought of documenting it. And there can't be anything bigger than making a film on it, that what happened during the first phase of covid and this movie is just about the first covid phase, maybe the first month and what happened during it.”
Also read: India Lockdown Trailer: Madhur Bhandarkar film revisits horrors of Covid-19, depicts common man's pandemic ordeal
The filmmaker also added that they finally decided on making the film around 4 stories finally. He said that he has to justify every character and It should not look like a documentary.
India Lockdown will have its world premiere on ZEE5, the video streaming service owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., on December 2.
