Stolen director Karan Tejpal says films with 'good person doing good things and winning' are boring: 'We are all flawed'

Karan Tejpal, who makes his directorial debut with Stolen, talks about the Abhishek Banerjee-starrer in a chat with HT.

Director Karan Tejpal's Stolen has finally found its way to reach the Indian audiences. Two years after it won viewers over in film festivals across the world, the film is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. In a chat with HT ahead of the release, the debutant director opened up about his filmmaking choices and more.

Karan Tejpal makes his directorial debut with Stolen,

Karan Tejpal on Stolen

Stolen stars Abhishek Banerjee as an urban man accused of stealing a baby from a railway platform, and how he and his brother are embroiled in a situation from which there is no escape. Interestingly, the film chooses Abhishek's Gautam, the more morally ambiguous character, as the protagonist. The younger brother, Raman (played by Shubham Vardhan), is more morally upright, but not the central character. Explaining that choice, Karan says, “That is a more dramatic story to tell, and hence, you are drawn to it more naturally. If you tell a story about a good person who does really good things and then wins at the end, it may be slightly boring.”

Connecting the choice to relatability, the sophomore filmmaker says, "Why we wanted to tell a story about a flawed character is because all of us are flawed, whether we accept it or not. In our private thoughts, we are extremely flawed, which is why we relate to such characters. Almost all filmmakers want to start with a flawed or under duress character so you can build from there."

On the ‘unusual’ debut

In an age when small independent films with offbeat subjects are struggling to find audiences, Karan chose Stolen for his debut. When asked why, he shrugs and says, "I just knew this one way to go. So, it's not like there was any choice for me."

Stolen, backed by Anurag Kashyap, Nikkhil Advani, Kiran Rao, and Vikramaditya Motwane, is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.