The journey of making a good film does not end just there, says producer Guneet Monga, whose movie “Haraamkhor” faced a roadblock from the censor board for telling an “objectionable” tale of romance between a teacher and a teenage student, but has now been cleared by the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) for release on January 13, 2017.
“I am just over the moon today that we won the court case (Tribunal) that lasted six months plus and we got U/A certificate. Guess what, we will have TV sale now,” Monga posted on her Facebook page.
“Over the last three years, we grew up and realised it is not enough to just make a good film. Most of the Bollywood films don’t break even and studios are shutting down, but hey… Our little crowd funded, independent film needs to tick all the boxes,” she added.
“Haraamkhor”, featuring the talent powerhouse Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a 35-year-old teacher and actress Shweta Tripathi
as his 15-year-old student, is directed by debutant Shlok Sharma.
Monga, who recently returned to Mumbai after toiling for two months for the campaigning of Tamil film “Visaaranai” — India’s official entry for the Foreign Language Film Oscar — says bringing “Haraamkhor” to reality happened with a firm conviction.
She recounted how she was always questioned about how the film would release, who her audience was and whether she had enough funds to manage marketing, publicity and advertising for “Haraamkhor”.
And she would respond: “No! We found the money to make the film on Facebook! We did not want one person’s money, so we got little money from a lot of amazing people who believed in us.”
Monga says it was the team’s conviction of telling the “important film” which they made with “a lot of love” that they continued to try getting a censor certificate.
The movie was has also travelled to multiple film festivals, and won at the 13th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) and at the 17th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.
Now while it’s finally ready to release, Monga said: “This film has reached where it has because of our Facebook friends… it’s now time to spread the word as we now release.”
