Entire idea of watching films in cinema halls has changed with pandemic: Paayel Sarkar

Q. How challenging was it to get into the headspace of this role?

A. These kinds of roles and stories are not often explored in Bengali films. Border-related issues were dealt with in films earlier but not with so much depth involving people in the nomads land along with crimes and the investigators. I think this is a very less explored space in Bengali films. I had no clue how these characters were. So I had asked plenty of questions to Suman-da when he was narrating the story.

I understood the research work of Suman-da when he answered all my queries. My character had to be very authentic and precise because such people are there in real life. So I had to be conscious over the maintenance of the parameters of this character. The maintenance of all those parameters was a challenge.

Q. Did you have any reference points to play this character? Any similarity?

A. I have no similarities with the character so finding one is difficult as such. Above all kinds of pressures, my character, who is an IB officer, realises the need to treat people as human beings. I can relate to this realisation which my character goes through in the film.

Q. Did you have any particular thought on cross-border human trafficking?

A. Though the film is not based on a true story, the incidents which we will see in it are familiar to us. Whatever information we get from the media is limited and not all. The investigators do not share all information because of security reasons. So before doing this film, I only had a superficial idea regarding this. We common people are not able to fathom the multiple layers of any case.

Q. Recently Bengali films barring a few have not delivered up to the expectations. How would you analyse this?

A. The trend in entertainment changes with time. But of late, the frequency of the change has increased much. The entire idea of going to the theatres and watching a movie was a kind of celebration before the pandemic. In the present time, the audience is aware that a film will be released on OTT later. So they are thinking whether spending money for a certain film will be worth it or not. I think this current situation will change again.

Q. Recurrent controversies are breaking out over the distribution of films in the state. How do you see this?

A. Actually an excess number of films are getting released now due to the backlog created during the two years of pandemic. It is a real problem but withholding a film's release creates excess pressure on a producer. So it is tough for a film to get the required space in the box office to flourish.

Even then some exceptionally good films are doing business in limited space on their own merit. Keeping aside all the struggles it faced (in terms of getting showtimes), Aparajito has done really well in the box office on its own merit. I think the situation will change in some time as we are getting back to normal lives (pre-Covid time).

Q. How would you describe the present phase of your career?

A. I am very lucky to do movies and OTTs parallely in this tough time (Covid era). I am getting the opportunities to play such versatile characters. I think it's because of divine intervention.