Rahul Bhat stars in Sanjeev Kaul’s Man Naked 

Rahul Bhat plays a 40-year-old man named Ronnie in Sanjeev Kaul’s single-shot film Man Naked. Ronnie, a struggling actor, gets drunk and passes out naked only to hear the doorbell ring in the middle of the night. In a bizarre turn of events, his destiny changes as video clips of his naked self go viral on the Internet and Ronnie becomes a star.

Man Naked was a finalist at the Tokyo International Film Festival and semi-finalist at Montreal Film Festival. It got an official selection at Venice Shorts, Cannes Independent Film Festival, and Goa Film Festival. 

In a first, Rahul has gone completely naked for the film. The unit had to undergo several mock shoots with real cameras and technicians to get it in a single shot. 

Once the film was completed, it was shown to ace filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who has lent his name as the film’s presenter. Rahul had previously worked with Anurag in Ugly (2013), where he also essayed a struggling actor. 

Kabir Lal has done the cinematography for the film, which is edited by Hussain A Burmawala. Sandesh Shandilya has composed the original music and Jitendra Chaudhary has done the sound design. 

“The challenge of doing this part was not only that it was a single shot film but I had to be totally naked in most of it,” Rahul shared. “Also, I had to remember an entire prose from the Soul of Lilith and perform the monologue in the middle of the single shot in one take.”

Sanjeev Kaul, the director, added, “I wanted to portray an actor struggling to crack the formula for success and take his talent to the world. The film follows him over the course of one night in Mumbai and how his life changes after an incident. The idea of shooting the film entirely in one shot came from the need to be with our protagonist at every step and get intertwined in his environment just as he sees it.”