“I am in a good place.” It’s been nearly years since Phantom Films, the production company Anurag Kashyap ran with his partners, was disba...
“I am in a good place.”
It’s been nearly years since Phantom Films, the production company Anurag Kashyap ran with his partners, was disbanded following an allegation of sexual harassment. Kashyap has since set up a new company, Good Bad Films, with two new partners, and is looking ahead to the premiere of Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai. The Netflix original film, which stars Saiyami Kher and Roshan Mathew, will be streamed from June 5.
Choked explores the life of a middle-class family in Mumbai, the impact of demonetisation and the way a bottomless flow of money can alter a person’s life. A one-line story about a bank cashier who discovers cash flowing out of her kitchen sink every night piqued Kashyap’s interest.
“When the writer Nihit Bhave came to me with the idea, I was intrigued by the house and the middle-class Maharashtrian world,” the 47-year-old filmmaker told Scroll.in. “Initially, it [felt like] magic realism within a Sai Paranjapye world. But there was no clean finish to the story, and that took almost four years to come together.”
The demonetisation angle found its way into the film much later. Kashyap was initially in favour of the removal of high-value notes from the economy in 2016. “It will cause a lot of heart ache...
