Filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee hasn’t been able to move on from his last project, Tees. The film’s release has been held back by Netflix, after the streamer commissioned it but told the director that it would be too risky to share it with the world. Tees stars Naseeruddin Shah, Manisha Koirala, Neeraj Kabi, Divya Dutta, Shashank Arora and Huma Qureshi, among others.
The film, which has been completed, is yet to see the light of the day. In an interview with Unfiltered by Samdish, Dibakar opened up about the issue, and said he is yet to “move on” from the project. He said that the film is “about three generations of an Indian family, which begins in the 80s and ends in 2042.”
“You were asking me which was the last film I have not been able to come out of? It is my last film, Tees, which Netflix is yet to release. They commissioned it, it is fully made, they bought it as well.” When asked why the streamer is sitting on the film, the filmmaker 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 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,” the filmmaker added.
The filmmaker, who has been a fiercely anti-establishment voice and makes movies with socio-political themes, said that he mounted Tees with a “secret agenda,” that it should reach the same people who loved his first film, Khosla Ka Ghosla.
“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 the 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 face and say, ‘The policies are very good but it will take some time.’ The sunshine they were looking for, is now permanently in the future. It can’t get better than this,” Dibakar claimed.
A recent Washington Post report also listed the other Indian projects that Netflix has backed out of, following the Tandav controversy. These include Anurag Kashyap’s magnum opus Maximum City and Vikramaditya Motwane’s Indi(r)a’s Emergency.
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Dibakar Banerjee opens up about Netflix dumping his film Tees, reveals he secretly made it to spite Khosla Ka Ghosla audience – The Indian Express
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