Mira Nair likes Tusshar’s Shor In The City

April 23, 2011 - 11:49 AM IST

'Shor In The City is up for it's theatrical next week. Also in the year gone by the film has travelled film festivals across Pusan, Duba and New York. Appreciated by the critics, the film had fetched high ratings for itself with wide coverage in international media as well. In fact a special mention had come from Mira Nair as well who was quite excited about the film's unique narrative.

Mira Nair likes Tusshar’s Shor In The City

"Yes, she really liked what she saw and was pretty generous in her appreciation", Tusshar smiles, "See, the fact is that Shor In The City bears the kind of sensibilities that works for the regular audience as well as the international viewers. Though it is not a regular Bollywood entertainer, it has that distinct Indian appeal to it which makes it stand out in the crowd."

Generally though when a film makes it to the festivals, the tag of offbeat gets attached to it. Tusshar however has taken it upon himself to change this perception with Shor In The City.

"On the contrary, the kind of audience response that I saw in the festivals woke me up to the commercial viability of the film", says Tusshar whose last release was a far more commercial Golmaal 3 (2010), "The film was appreciated by not just the folks who frequent festival circuit but also the regular NRI/crossover crowd. You know the kind of crowd for which a Hindi film stands for Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. In any case Shor In The City was not made just for the festivals. Still, after testing waters at the festivals, we knew that we had to expand our horizon now."

Tusshar admits though that this isn't for the first time that an Indian film has managed to bear a stamp of the new wave and does acknowledge that attempts like these have been made in the past as well.

"There have been films like Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Life In A Metro which cut across boundaries", he says, "They can work in festivals as well as entice youth worldwide. Shor In The City too has a similar appeal. It is neither a documentary nor a slow drama. It is very crisp, edgy and fast paced fun film. If you ask me to define a genre here, I would say it should be looked at as an entertaining black comedy."

The moment he says the word 'comedy', one is bound to start drawing a parallel with many a comic outings that Bollywood indulges in every passing month. What has the director duo of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK resisted the temptation and done something really different with the comic genre here?

"Don't worry, it is definitely not your regular slapstick comedy here", assures Tusshar with a smile, "Shor In The City is a little dark in it's presentation but it does have entertainment through humour at the same time. It has elements of thrill and drama at the core of it. Uske saath saath the genre of black comedy also flows along. At the end of it all, it is masala film which has a mix of everything."