Filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee recently spoke about his last project Tees, whose release has been held back by Netflix. The director, in an interview with Unfiltered by Samdish, said that he is unable to move on from the film after the streamer commissioned it but told him it was “too risky” to be shared with the world.
Tees was announced in 2019 as a Netflix original under its previous title Freedom as “the story of an Indian family interwoven with the personal, ideological and sexual history of India.”
“It is about three generations of an Indian family, which begins in the 80s and ends in 2042,” said Dibakar. “Netflix commissioned it, it is fully made, they bought it as well.” When asked why the film is not being released, Dibakar said, “It is best to ask them. They told us that they are not sure if this is the right time to release the film. Later they gave a statement in an interview and said that the film didn’t fit their slate.”
“Now I am knocking on all doors, begging people to buy the film from Netflix. I am meeting people in India as well as abroad so that someone buys it from Netflix and releases it. I have not been able to move on from the film because I am entangled in it,” he added.
The director went on to say that Tees is a film he made for the audience who liked Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006). “Khosla is an uncle-pleaser, all the uncles love it. The same ‘uncle’ is portrayed even in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar where Raghubir Yadav says, ‘We need a dictator, all the trains will run on time.’ This uncle crowd gets aroused by the mere mention of the word ‘dictator’. It was the same Khosla audience which thought it’s ok if some Muslims and Adivasis die, at least we will get a six-lane expressway which can quickly get us to the mall and stay in double-digit growth.”
“So, I made the film for them. The Muslims are dying, Dalits are not doing well, and now when I ask the uncles how are they feeling, they have an expressionless veil on their faces and say, ‘The policies are very good but it will take some time.’ The Ram Rajya they were looking for, is now permanently in the future,” Dibakar said.
