'Nirbashito' not a biopic on Taslima Nasreen?

Churni Ganguly, the director of "Nirbashito", says the acclaimed film is not based on the biography of controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen but rather inspired by her life post exile. 

Churni said her debut film, which released recently, is centred around the solitary life of the author and her relation with her pet cat. "The movie is in no way a biopic and is not intended to make a political statement either," Churni, an established actress in Bengali cinema, said. 

The film, which won the best film award at the 2014 Delhi Film Festival and two National Awards (best Bengali film and sound designer trophy) earlier this year, features several poems written by Taslima as part of the background score. "The film revolves around the author and her pet cat, so you can draw a parallel with Taslima's cat Minu but there are many incidents in the film, which did not happen in the writer's life," Churni told PTI here.

She said that once when she and her husband, filmmaker Kaushik Ganguly, visited Taslima's house in Kolkata, they were struck by her motherly instinct as manifested in her relation with Minu, the cat. Churni said Kaushik was so moved that he wrote a scipt about a mother and her child. "When I took up the script, I tweaked it a bit and dwelt on the aspect of the author's loneliness and her love and care for the cat. It is more of an emotional drama," she insisted.

Churni said the film was also about values of tolerance and democratic principles. Taslima, who watched the film at her home, liked the concept and allowed some of her poems, which talked about a woman's solitude following social ostracisation, to be used in the film, Churni said.