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Dia Mirza to play Bengali girl
Ex-beauty queen Dia Mirza, who has played young and girly characters in films so far, is excited about her role in her first Bengali film, Paanch Adhyay. She says, “This is the first time I have played a woman in a film.”
Ex-beauty queen Dia Mirza, who has played young and girly characters in films so far, is excited about her role in her first Bengali film, Paanch Adhyay. She says, “This is the first time I have played a woman in a film.”
The film revolves around her character Ishita’s journey with her love interest, Arindham. “It is a poignant, mature, beautiful take on a man-woman relationship as Ishita discovers herself in the ten years of their life, marriage and relationship. You will see her evolve as a person onscreen, which was the challenging part of the character for me,” explains the actor.
The other tough portions for her were the long scenes and dialogues in Bengali. “I had to bring to the fore the history of the relationship in a few words. Ishita’s character deals with issues on multiple levels and one had to bring that to the fore with simple lines. It is tough to emote about situations that you haven’t gone through in real life. I don’t know what feels to not have a child and want one. So my personal emotions didn’t really help me understand and feel the angst of the character,” adds Dia, terming her film as ‘thinking man’s cinema’.
Paanch Adhyay will make the rounds of the festival circuit before it releases commercially mid-year.But the producer in Dia found this experience enriching. She says, “Not only does the writing have maturity, but Bengali, as a language, brings about nuances effortlessly.”
She was bowled over by the small crew and tight budget that yielded supreme quality. “The translation of thought into image is commendable. In Hindi films, small budget ventures find it difficult to achieve that kind of aesthetic. They get superlative technical crew, which never happens here. The new experience was to shoot using a digital camera called Alexa, wherein expense on raw stock is eliminated, yet quality of the image is superior.”
