After action, Nikhil Advani turns to reality

After making two back-to-back romantic films, Kal Ho Naa Ho and Salaam-e-Ishq, Nikhil Advani now plans to romance realism on the big screen next.

After two back-to-back candyfloss romances in Kal Ho Naa Ho and Salaam-e-Ishq, and in the process of shooting the action movie Made In China, Nikhil Advani plans to romance realism on the big screen next.

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"It's the story of an 11-year-old boy in a remand home that my wife works in. When she told me this boy's harrowing and tragic story I suggested we make a film on it," Advani told IANS.

"My wife, who is with several charitable organisations, including Aangan, has warned me that it can have no music and songs. And since everything I do in my life and career is to please my wife, I've no choice but to comply," he added.

This is not going to be a mega budget movie.

"I want to make a small budget film. I always say that but I end up making big films. But this time I mean it. I want to tell a very personal story that has been waiting within me to be told for a while.

Not that this untitled film will be a dry documentary-like tale.

"Not at all. It will have music but no songs. I want to do it in one schedule. It's a story that needs to be told."

Interestingly, the director has found the boy to play the 11-year-old protagonist.

"But he isn't the boy whose story is being told in my film. He's another boy in the remand home whom I saw performing at the play.

"Basically, I want to put forward the theme that a kid who kills someone and the one who has just run away from home shouldn't be categorised as equally culpable and put in a remand home. The environment hardens them irrevocably. Organisations such as the one my wife works for provides therapy to delinquent children through music, drama, storytelling, films. She one day narrated the story of the boy to me."