Locals feel ‘Paharganj’ portrays the area in negative light; producer, director explain 

The trailer of Rakesh Ranjan Kumar’s upcoming film Paharganj: The Little Amsterdam of India slated to release on April 12, 2019 hasn’t gone well with the locals of Paharganj even as it continues to create buzz on the internet. The hoteliers and traders of Paharganj feel that the film depicts the locality in a negative light and that its release will affect their livelihood. They have moved the Delhi High Court in this matter which in turn asked the Union information and broadcasting ministry to take a decision on the film’s release.

“The Union government has disposed of the representation filed against Paharganj. They planned to see our movie but they decided otherwise as the film has already been certified by the CBFC. So we are going ahead with the release on April 12,” reveals producer Prakash Bhagat who believes that the people of Paharganj have misinterpreted the movie’s intention.

“I think after seeing the movie’s poster, teaser and the trailer probably the traders association ended up perceiving the film in a different way as they have misunderstood the concept of the Little Amsterdam of India. Probably these people have related Amsterdam with prostitution and drugs. On the contrary our intention is to portray Paharganj as a hub of tourist attraction. It is actually a transit point for all tourists who come to India. It is a very vibrant and colorful place. Sadly it has been wrongly perceived by the locals,” explains Bhagat.

Paharganj is the second film directed by Rakesh Ranjan Kumar who previously made the 2011 controversial film Gandhi to Hitler. “Although I don’t disown Gandhi to Hitler but somewhere I didn’t enjoy the kind of creative control I would have liked to enjoy as a director owing to various reasons and so I like to think of Paharganj as my debut film,” says Kumar who still enjoys a bachelor’s life and occasionally teaches filmmaking as a visiting faculty across universities in Pune and Bangalore. Kumar, who holds a post-graduate degree in Hindi Literature from Hindu College, likes to see himself as a writer first. He asserts, “Had I not been a filmmaker I would have been a novelist.”

Kumar attributes the long gap between his two films to a methodical creative process that he usually follows in order to find the right structure to his stories. “I don’t like to see films as products. If one wants to create something that’s long-lasting then it’s bound to take time. After my first film I was involved with the couple of projects but things didn’t materialise. For Paharganj I started the research in 2015 and it took me almost a year to develop the storyline. I would visit Paharganj every night and try to study the different groups of people I would encounter there. I finished the script the next year and finally the production and editing got completed by 2018. Actually, Prakash and I are batch mates from Hindu College and so the idea of making a film together clicked during one of our meetings and that’s how Paharganj materialized,” reveals Kumar.

Although the research started in 2015 but the actual idea behind making a film about Paharganj has a much older origin. “During my college days I used to occasionally visit Paharganj in the night time as it was the only way to explore the night life in Delhi. The place takes a life of its own during the night time. You will find neon sign boards written in Hebrew during the night but it all disappears in the day time. I used to discuss the possibilities of making a film on Paharganj with friends but then in those days we could only think of an international filmmaker trying to make such a film. So somewhere the seed was sown all those years ago,” recounts Kumar who started his film career as a writer working on TV scripts with the likes of Anurag Kashyap and Imtiaz Ali, his batch mate from Hindi college, who also served as a creative consultant on Gandhi to Hitler.

Paharganj is a mystery thriller which revolves around a Spanish woman who comes to India in search of her lover but gets caught in the middle of a high profile political murder and a raging gang war. The film stars noted Spanish model and writer Lorena Franco in the lead role. “While the film was primarily created for an international audience but thanks to the advent of Netflix and Amazon Prime we now have that international audience in India itself. Also we have made it as a musical so that it appeals to the conventional audience as well,” sums up Kumar.