Ghosts of partition

What began as a personal quest became a shared legacy of pain and trauma and then a 'Qissa', Geneva based director Anup Singh tells Sarika Sharma:
How was the film conceived?
The Partition of India made my paternal grandfather a refugee. I grew up surrounded by his tales and one of them stayed with me. Many women would jump into wells rather than risk rape when their village was attacked during Partition.A very old man told me that his daughter, hardly a teenager, had jumped into the well too and, now, 60 years later, he still dreams about her. He sees her ghost in the well, looking up at the circle of sky above, waiting for him, her father, to come for her. This story was one of the starting points of Qissa.
The strange thing with many of these stories is that they start as very real tales, traumatic memories, but often veer off into the imaginary. I really wanted this quality of a fable for Qissa.
How did you choose the actors?
I wrote the script with Balraj Sahni in mind. After him, there is only one actor who understands that improvising on oneself is our only identity. In almost every performance of his, he comes as a stranger, a resourceful traveller to the language, the culture, the milieu. Tillotama Shome came to an audition and as soon as she made the first gesture, I had a very strange feeling. You know that feeling when you see a hawk in the air opens its wings to surge higher and the sky seems to expand? When I saw her at the audition, I felt something expand within me. She has won two international Best Actress awards for Qissa.
You have been taking the film to international audiences for the last two years. What have the reactions been like?
After winning best Asian Film Award at Toronto Film Festival, Qissa was shown at the Mumbai Film Festival, where the audience broke down the cinema door to see the film.
The reactions have been fervent and impassioned, immensely supportive and, curiously, people have been celebrating the film, as though it released some long repressed painful emotion within them. I believe an audience that remains vulnerable to its inner spirit and is fearless about celebrating life in all its complexity will find Qissa is just as much their story as it's mine.
Why did you choose to tell the story in Punjabi?
Every language has its texture, lilt and dance. I was determined that the music and rhythm of the spoken language be in harmony with the larger rhythms of the film. Many a times you must have noticed that the image and the dialogue simply do not harmonize, but distort and betray each other.
Are you onto your new project? Would it be a Punjabi film?
Yes. My new project is called Mantra - Song of Scorpions, but it is not in Punjabi. This film is set in the deep desert of Rajasthan and will be in Rajasthani Hindi. This film is about a woman singer and healer in a traditional community in the desert of Rajasthan and her mystic and musical journey to gain control over her own destiny. The Iranian actress, Golshifteh Farahani, has been cast for this role.