‘Dhobi Ghat is meant for global stage’2 min read

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Dhobi Ghat is a rare movie to come out of Bollywood and it is meant for the global stage, says Cameron Bailey, co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where the film will have its premiere. The Festival opened last Thursday, and will showcase about 300 films from around the film.

Praising the film’s director Kiran Rao, and her husband Aamir Khan in the lead role for doing a “terrific, terrific job”, Bailey told IANS: “Dhobi Ghat is really not a masala movie. It has no song, no dancing. It’s really an independent film – a story that’s a love letter to Mumbai, it’s very much about the people of Mumbai.”

“When I saw it in July in Mumbai, I fell in love with it. It is very beautifully done. It’s very provocative, romantic. It really captures the feel of Mumbai – the things I love about the city, the vibrancy of the place, the feel of its streets, and the people. And it all happens in the monsoon season so that you get the texture of the rain, and how it feels to be there at that time of the year.”

Bailey added, “This is her [Kiran Rao’s] first directorial effort, though she has been working on films for years. I think she is part of a generation of filmmakers that we are seeing come up now in India – a new school in international cinema. This generation is not making films out of the Indian commercial cinema context, but making films that are referencing American independent cinema or European cinema or Asian cinema.”

“Kiran has talked to me about being influenced by a couple of Asian filmmakers – Tsai Ming Liang from Taiwan and Wong Kar Wai from Hong Kong. So I find that there is a kind of dialogue happening among filmmakers in different parts of the world.”