Tickled Pink

With a fourth National Award in his kitty, Shoojit Sircar is happy making films he believes in Cinema is an Cinema is an open hearted conversation with the audience and if you build any pressure that conversation witnesses a block.

- Priyanka Bhadani

That he has always been socially aware was evident from the first film he made in 2005. Shoojit Sircar’s Yahaan captured the life of people stuck in the intricate geopolitics in Kashmir. It didn’t do well at the box-office though. His next film—Shoebite—starring Amitabh Bachchan, about the life of an older man on the path of self-discovery, got shelved. It still disheartens him, as it does Bachchan. But Sircar, who had a prolific career in advertising, bounced back with Vicky Donor, which got him a National Award for providing ‘wholesome entertainment’. The idea around the life of a sperm donor was fresh, to say the least. But, “people had laughed at the idea initially,” he says.

Since then, the move forward has mostly been positive, and his films very different from each other. If Madras Cafe was a highly charged up political drama capturing the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, Piku was a slice of-life film.