INTO THE GROOVE

Babil Khan is simply trying to do his best

- BARRY RODGERS

Babil Khan is not worried about being compared to his father, the late Irrfan Khan. Instead, he's excited about continuing his father's legacy of doing great films. "When I signed my first film (Qala) there were a few nerves initially because you think: 'what if I fall flat?"" And while he doesn't care for the term 'debut', he's excited to be in the Anvita Dutt directorial, Qala. Dutt's Bulbbul, as many would remember, stood out for its scathing visual grammar - blood-red, dense, atmospheric. "Certainly, a film is not a radio play. The aesthetics of it had to be right.

I wanted to capture the fantastical suspension of belief one has while listening to fairy tales," Dutt said in a 2021 Grazia interview.

Her choice of a fairy-tale aesthetic, which is essentially also the case in Qala, is to convey a more significant point about the horrors of patriarchy and self-indulgent men, which wouldn't have probably come to a male director.

The Hindi-language by Karnesh Ssharma's Clean Slate film, produced Filmz, takes place between the 1930s and the 1940s. Triptii Dimri plays the titular singer, whose path to fame winds past an uncaring mother, questionable personal choices, and sexual predators.