Rituparno Ghosh is a fabulous actor: director Sanjoy Nag

MUMBAI - Debutant Bengali director Sanjoy Nag, who cast director Rituparno Ghosh in his film “Memories in March”, is all praise for the National Award winner’s acting skills.

“He is a fabulous actor. He plays a senior advertising professional in a small boutique ad agency in the film,” Nag, whose film was screened at the ongoing 12th Mumbai Film Festival, told IANS here.

Nag says Ghosh was his only choice for the role in the film that deals with death.

“When the script was written and finalised, I could only think of him doing the role. He was into advertising world for 17 years, so that was an added advantage to me. He was super excited and it didn’t take much pain on my part to convince him,” said Nag.

Ghosh has also written the screenplay of the film.

Asked if Ghosh gave any creative inputs while shooting, Nag said: “Not really. The script was quite well-written and once it was done, he followed what I wanted.”

“Memories of March” tells the story of a bereaved mother Arati Mishra (Deepti Naval), who comes to Kolkata to collect her son’s ashes and belongings after his death. There she meets her late son’s friends and colleagues and after interacting with them she learns their perspective about her son, which is quite different and gives her an opportunity to discover a new side of her son.

The film got screened at Pusan International Film Festival last week and will got to more festivals before its official release in March. But the director insists his film was not meant for festivals.

“It was not meant to be so-called festival film, it will have a proper commercial release. Though we just had a world premiere at Pusan and then it will go to some more festivals till March. We were planning to release it in March as it is ‘Memories in March’,” said Nag.

Will the ‘festival film’ tag affect the commercial aspect of his movie?

“I don’t think so. The kind of film it is, it is going to have its own niche audience, its going to have its own slot.”