Filmmaker Meghna Gulzar says her upcoming thriller Daayra, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran in the lead roles, took her into unexplored creative and social territory, while allowing her to examine the shades of grey that exist within individuals and society.
Meghna, daughter of cinema icon Gulzar, shared a note on Instagram on Thursday, saying that she has explored these shades of grey in her earlier films, including Talvar, Raazi, Chhapaak and Sam Bahadur but Daayra turned out to be something else.
"Daayra took my creativity to areas I have never explored before. It took my social awareness to reaches I didn't know I had. As a student of Sociology, I learned that our life and our society is not binary. It's not just black and white,” she wrote in a note on Instagram.
"There is a spectrum of grey that we exist in. In my journey as a filmmaker – through Talvar, Raazi, Chhapaak and Sam Bahadur, I have cherished exploring that very grey - within characters and within the world they, and we live in. Daayra for me, not only explores that grey... It invades it... it attempts to dismantle it," she added.
The film stars Kareena as DCP Ajooni Kohli and Prithviraj as DCP Raman Kumar who often find themselves on opposite sides of a delicate line between law and justice.
The filmmaker also said that the film changed her understanding of her home city of Mumbai and the country she thought she knew well.
"I was born in Mumbai. Having lived here all my life; and having travelled extensively across India, I thought I knew most of the city and the country through my life's journey so far. But the journey of Daayra took me to unseen and unvisited places. And that's just the geography," she said.
Inspired by several true events from across India, Daayra is not set in one particular city or state but in a world that Meghna said can exist "almost everywhere and anywhere in our country".
"At its core Daayra is only about duality. And this duality is entrenched through the two main protagonists of the film," she said.
Describing the characters, she said Ajooni is "fiercely righteous", while Raman is "righteously fierce".
"As in life, so in Daayra, they are neither black nor white. They are both swirling in a sea of grey. Sometimes the line of law guides them, sometimes it entraps them. And Daayra explores how they navigate these journeys," she added.
Meghna said casting the two actors was a "dream come true", bringing together performers from the Hindi and Malayalam film industries for the first time.
The film allowed Kareena to explore an "entirely unseen facet" of her acting, she added.
"She cracks open situations and people with a smile. Prithviraj as Raman, is the hinge to Kareena's Ajooni. Seething with a caged rage. And almost never smiles. The two are the Ying and Yang of Daayra. And that's just one of the many dualities that Daayra navigates," Meghna said.
Daayra is written by Yash Keswani, Sima Agarwal and Gulzar and is backed by Junglee Pictures and Pen Studios. It is scheduled to be released in theatres on September 18.
