Manto lies somewhere in Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s eyes: Nandita Das

By Vandana Srivastawa

on May 09, 2018

Actor-director Nandita Das’s directorial venture Manto will screen at Cannes Film Festival in the UnCertain Regard Section. The film is a biopic on the Pakistani writer Saadat Hasan Manto born in British India and stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the lead and titular role. In an interview with a leading daily, Nandita spoke her heart out on what prompted her to make the biopic almost a decade after her directorial debut Firaaq and why she chose Nawazuddin for the main lead.

Nandita waited for almost a decade before venturing to go behind the camera with Manto as she was disappointed with the release of her debut film Firaaq and did not want to make another film. She said, “Firaaq released at a time when there was no social media, so one was solely at the mercy of the producers. In any case, direction was not part of any design but a more spontaneous response to what was happening around me. I challenged my energies through a play called Between The Lines which I wrote, directed and performed. But it got difficult to do outdoor shows as I had to take my son everywhere.”

She said that the germination of an idea on Manto had come to her a long time back even before she made Firaaq but the idea took shape only in 2012 when she started doing research and read his essays. Nandita revealed that she first read Saadat Hasan Manto’s works when she was in college and later bought his complete works in a collection called Dastavez.

When she was asked about why she zeroed in on Nawazuddin Siddiqui to play the title role, she said, “I always had Nawazuddin in mind while writing the film. Firaaq was his first significant role in a feature film. In 2013 at Cannes, I told him about the film. He was excited and assured me that he would give all the time and commitment to it, whenever it happened. They say if you get the casting right, 70 per cent of your job is done, and with Nawazuddin, that’s exactly what happened. He has an incredible range as an actor, but intrinsically Manto lies somewhere in his eyes.”