Mumbai, July 19 (IANS) Arjun Mathur, who was seen in Farhan Akhtar‘s short film “Positive” on AIDS, is now getting ready to play an important part in Zoya Akhtar’s directorial debut “Luck By Chance”. “It’s a very interesting, though small, part of a theatre and television actor named Abhimanyu. Farhan has been very supportive. I wouldn’t have found my way around this industry without him,” Arjun told IANS. Farhan happens to be Zoya’s brother.
In “Positive”, the newcomer played the son of Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani. He was also seen in Mira Nair’s short film “Migration” as Irrfan Khan’s gay lover. Arjun, who attended Barry John’s institute as well as the Lee Strasburg Theatre & Film Institute in New York, has just completed another socially relevant short film.
“The short film format doesn’t seem to leave me,” grinned Arjun. “After doing the two AIDS films with Farhan and Mira, I’ve just completed another short film for a 10-film omnibus on Mumbai called ‘Mumbai Cutting’. “My film, the last of the 10, is directed by Ayush Raina. The others are directed by people like Sudhir Mishra, Anurag Kashyap and Rituparno Sengupta. It premiered recently at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.”
But before that, the Delhi dude plays a boorish but benign Bihari waiter in new-director Rajan Menon’s “Barah Aana”. “I play a waiter. Vijay Raaz plays the watchman and Naseeruddin Shah a driver from north India. We play three friends and migrants in Mumbai who stay in the Dharavi slums,” said Arjun.
The film, which also features “Brick Lane” actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, acquires an added significance in the light of anti-migrant protests in Maharashtra called by a political party.
“The film was called ‘Bhaiyya’ to begin with. But the rights to that title were with a Bhojpuri producer.”
