Anubhav Sinha to produce anthology based on COVID-19 pandemic; shares details

Director Anubhav Sinha has collaborated with filmmakers Sudhir Mishra, Hansal Mehta, Ketan Mehta, and Subhash Kapoor to back an anthology based on stories around the coronavirus pandemic. To be produced under his banner, Benaras Mediaworks, the "Thappad" director said he thought of documenting the crisis after Sudhir's driver contracted COVID-19 and was unable to get a bed at the hospital.

Subsequently, Anubhav said the loss of close friend and actor Irrfan Khan, who passed away on April 29, and the challenges of attending his last rites hit him harder. 

"What better way to do it than different filmmakers looking at different things? Sudhir's father passed during COVID. We lost Irrfan and couldn't not even go to his funeral. Sudhir bhai's driver had contracted COVID and he was unable to get a bed – and we were making all sorts of phone calls just to get him a hospital bed. Tigmanshu had to fight the cops to go and said 'Irrfan is my brother, I will go.' All these things were disturbing. I thought these should be recorded. I spoke to my friends who agreed to do this and that's how the idea behind it began to formalise," Anubhav said in a statement. 

The 55-year-old director said the project offered an opportunity for all the filmmakers to team up for a "good collaboration".  "There's one story by Subhash, one by Hansal, one by Sudhir, one probably by Ketan. These are filmmakers that I believe that the so-called 'Bollywood' has largely ignored," he added. 

Shedding light on each filmmaker's story, Anubhav said, while Hansal's story is "comic and quite tragic", Mishra's film is political.  "Subhash's is also political, but in a different way. I am still struggling with my story - I want to tell an atmospheric story, which is about fear. I live on the 20th floor and I can see a very large expanse of Mumbai from my window. It has suddenly started looking like a deserted, dead city. And Ketan is saying 'main dekh ke batata hoon' (I will tell you in a while).'"

Produced by Anubhav Sinha under his banner Benaras Mediaworks, the yet-to-be-titled anthology is scheduled to be released in 2021. Anand Gandhi, best known for "Ship of Theseus", is also set to direct a pandemic-based film titled "Emergence". 

(with PTI inputs)