Peddlers’ release uncertain in India

Vasan Bala

By Priyanka Bhadani

Since the last few years film-maker Anurag Kashyap has been known to churn out amazing talent. It again seems to be a proud moment for him as one of the film-makers from his camp— Vasan Bala, who won many accolades for his first film Peddlers has been selected for the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors’ Lab along with 12 other film-makers from across the world.
“I am really excited to be a part of something like this as this particular workshop isn’t in collaboration with any agency but a ‘by invitation’ thing,” says Bala adding that he has been selected because the selectors liked his earlier work. In the five-day lab that begins on June 20, Bala would be working on his coming-of-age drama Side Hero. “The story has been with me for sometime now. When Sundance approached me, I proposed it to them and they were good to take it forward,” says Bala who is really excited to be a part of this because of the fact that Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dog has been a result of this lab and even American film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson has been a part of it. “It has been a prestigious tradition. It is a place when you are polished by the best people in the industry. It gives you an edge over others, because you get to interact with people with different sensibilities,” he says.
However, Bala is not really happy with how the entire process from the filming to the release functions in India. Sadly, his first film, Peddlers that revolves around 20-year-old destitute boys in Mumbai who get trapped in the drug trade and a young cop tracking them, still hasn’t seen the light of the day. “It’s with Eros International and I am really not sure when is it going to release,” says a disappointed Bala who, since last two years, has been hoping to get a decent release for his film.
Now he is moving forward to films with newer concepts. Ask him if he has tried to keep the subject of Side Hero light because of his experiences, he says, “Consciously I’ve not tried to write a light-hearted script but Side Hero is drastically different from Peddlers. It’s a lot more fun.”
Currently, the director has been busy with the second unit shoot of Anurag Kashyap’s ambitious Bombay Velvet which is now in the post-production stage.