Actress and filmmaker Pooja Bhatt with Suchitra Pillai and Salia Kariat were present at the World Mental Health Day event to explore an award-winning film ‘The Valley’. During media interaction the actress said, filmmaking has become game of marketing.
When asked Pooja about recent trend in Bollywood where content driven films working at the box-office more than big-budgeted films which have huge star cast, to that, Pooja said, “Audience has been always smart. We, supposedly, who call our self experts of the industry, underestimate the audience and say that they are not ready to see issue-based films. Today, there is no issue with audience and filmmaker but I feel now filmmaking has become game of marketing. If you make good content driven film but if you don’t have marketing budget then your film will not work and on the other hand, big-budgeted films which have no content works at the box-office so they drowns out content driven films like Tsunami”
Talking about the film, ‘The Valley ‘which deals with mental health and depression, Pooja said, “It will surely bring some sort of awareness about mental health. I want to congratulate Salia (director) because in today’s time news has also become form of entertainment so for a filmmaker to choose to make a film about topic like this is really brave effort.”
“We don’t talk about depression, mental health and alcoholism and being a female director, she brings feminine perspective to the issue and in this film also a young girl dies so that itself is very unique about this film”
“I urge everyone if you have experienced this in your personal life then you should put forward the message which has presented in this film because we only talk about such kind of films but in reality, we see something else only. This film’s shoot has completed in 21 days so with that you gauge the kind of effort this team has put in to present this film for the audience”
Pooja Bhatt last produced film Cabaret which starred Richa Chadha and Gulshan Devaiah was scheduled to release in 2016 but till the time it hasn’t released so when asked Pooja about it, she said, “It release when my partner Bhushan Kumar and Wave Cinemas fairly and transparently release payment of my workers and I would urge then not to violate my copyrights then only it will release otherwise it will not release”.
‘The Valley’ is directed by Saila Kariat is an award-winning Indie drama talking about depression and mental health. The film stars Alyy Khan, Suchitra Pillai-Malik, Samina Peerzada, Barry Corbin, Christa B. Allen and Jake T. Austin.
