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Ananth Mahadevan’s upcoming film Rough Book takes a hard look at the education system, but in an entertaining way. The film has generated a lot of buzz for this unique topic and also for it’s rather quaint ensemble cast! Within the film circuit, the film has received much praise internationally, especially for the cast. So, while on one hand, there is the talented dynamo Tannishtha Chatterjee and many theatre seniors including Kaizad Kotwal, Suhasini Mulay, Vinay Jain, Joy Sengupta, on the other hand all the students are actually first-time actors, except the protagonist, Amaan F Khan, who is one-film-old.
Talking about it, Mahadevan points out that the contrast itself made it a very interesting concept. He elaborates,
“It was not a conscious decision to make it a senior versus junior kind of a thing, but I was sure that I wanted certain raw and fresh appeal when it came to showing students. I didn’t want actors to behave like students, I wanted young kids to just be themselves and so we cast actual students. The contrast shines beautifully though, as there’s a perfect balance between the seasoned and the young and the restless, very much like the essence of the film.”
The director is also praise for the newbies as he feels that they have pulled off their roles with amazing ease.
He adds,
“They have played their parts beautifully.”
Curiously, Mahadevan didn’t hold many workshops for the newbie actors! Explaining why, he says,
“The idea of casting newbies as students was to capture their restlessness and raw energy on screen. We didn’t want it to look trained or restrained at any point. Hence we had workshop only to help them understand the characters. We didn’t want them to even learn their dialogues.”
It seems like the director’s mantra worked big time too as it has only been garnering accolades on all fronts. We can’t wait to check this one out!
