The Power of Culture

"My film is mainly Hindi spoken, but it is definitely a Hinglish film", says Sen-Gupta. "The genre owes its name to the language, that's how it started. But we have developed a whole new style of our own." That style is fast, realistic and at times fragmental, shot on video. "I want to offer resistance to Bollywood movies. People watch them in order to forget their problems. Dreaming away for a while with a fairytale. I want to show reality and make people think."

Therefore Sen-Gupta explicitly criticizes politics and the lifestyle of modern man in his movie."Life's too often about money and consuming. This distracts from culture, ideas and intellectual development." This criticism, and the sex scenes, didn't pass censorship and Sen-Gupta couldn't release his film in India. "That's regrettable, since I really wanted to tell this story in India. I want to show the life of these youngsters, since it worries me but also because I am hopeful. There will certainly be a turn to other values."

With this movie Sen-Gupta also tells his own story. He grew up in the suburbs, lost his father at seventeen and had to go out and work in order to support himself and his mother. He found a small job in the film industry. It was only years later when he realised he really wanted to be a film maker.

From sheer necessity he is now internationally promoting his film, which played at several festivals and is released in the US. "But also in the film business commerce rules. I hope there will be enough people who keep making an effort to make beautiful films and tell interesting stories."