"Har family, family nahi hoti," says the promotional tagline of Kanu Behl's Titli. The film, based on the life of the youngest son Titli (Shashank Arora) of a carjacking family living in the dark underbelly of Delhi, who is desperate to run away from his intimidating brother Vikram (Ranvir Shorey), draws deeply from Kanu's own personal demons.
"I wrote a film before this (one) but couldn't mount it. A lot of things were going wrong in my life at the time... I was going through divorce. So I stepped back, reassessed why I was writing that film, and found that it was a dishonest attempt. So, I took six months off to write something that came from personal experiences."
That's when his writing took him to his relationship with his father. "I had a difficult relationship with my father. So, I set out to do a film about this young boy with an oppressive older brother. I did not want this to be a rant and wanted some distance from my own experiences. So, I transposed my experiences into the relationship between the brothers, because the older brother is almost like a father; their age difference is quite a bit," says Kanu.
Titli debuted at the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes last year, and releases in India this week. Produced by Dibakar Banerjee and YashRaj Films, it also stars Shivani Raghuvanshi, Amit Sial and Kanu's father, theatre artiste Lalit Behl.
Kanu grew up fearing his father, who wanted him to act instead of being a screenwriter and director. Lalit Behl, who admits that he ignored Kanu for his career, says he is proud of his son. "Initially, I was a bit reluctant, but I went ahead with the film. I realised that the older generation also needs to ease on the restrictions it lays down in the name of discipline," says the veteran actor-director.
Dibakar, who earlier worked with Kanu in Love, Sex Aur Dhokha and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, says Titli is a personal attempt by his protégé. "Kanu's relationship with Titli is very personal, because it was coming from his experiences, his struggles with his father and his family while growing up."
"Early on, I knew that Kanu's depiction of family will stand on the head of these preconceived notions that the Indian audience has about family. Many who saw the film were shocked by this absolute candid approach to what goes on inside a family. Because a lot of what happens in the film also happens in their lives."
Dibakar says there was a moment when the script was taking shape when he himself wanted to direct it. It also helped that Anurag Kashyap threatened to produce it. "Initially, I was reluctant about producing someone else's film. When Anurag said, please produce it or I will, it weighed in swinging my decision."
His involvement with Titli has mostly been with marketing. "I gave feedback for the script and during the edit. Other then that, I've been involved in marketing it, in the making of the trailer, etc," says Dibakar. "I make sure there's one hit song in every film I do. I looked after marketing in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, LSD, Shanghai because, when Khosla Ka Ghosla came out, no one other than producer Ronnie Screwvala knew how to market it. But Titli was so much of its own animal that one had to just go with."
Kanu's next, Agra, has gone to the Asian Project Market at Busan Film Festival. It's about a man in love with a girl who has to prove to his family that the girl exists. But, he denies that family is a familiar leitmotif. "I am obsessed with the idea of a film. Agra is mostly about space – physical and mental – and the lack of it in India," says Kanu.
