After the success of Tonic and Projapoti, Dev Entertainment Ventures and Bengal Talkies have come together for another festive release, Pradhan, set to release on December 22. Team Pradhan recently got together for the film’s trailer launch at Bengal Club. Directed by Avijit Sen, the film is a family drama that is like a breath of fresh air.
Starring Dev, Paran Bandopadhyay, Soham, Koneenica Banerjee, Soumitrisha Kundu, Biswajit Chakraborty, Tulika Bose, Sabitri Chatterjee, Mamata Shankar, Ambarish Bhattacharya, Sneha Bose, Anirban Chakrabarti, Biswanath Basu and Sohini Sengupta, the film’s trailer gives a hint of the storyline where Deepak Pradhan played by Dev arrives in a town as a police officer to take care of the law and order.
“Pradhan is all about ‘entertainment’, ‘entertainment’, and ‘entertainment’. I had a great time during the shoot... and yes it was both risky and adventurous when Soham and I rode the bike in the mountains. There was a huge cast and we had so much fun after our pack-up. We enjoyed ourselves, sang together and made many memories. Pradhan is a film that connects many emotions and thoughts of a lot of people in its plot. There’s a police officer named Deepak Pradhan who visits a village and meets the characters, and the film goes on to show whether he can solve the issues they are facing. The entire story revolves around this plot,” said Dev.
Actor Anirban Chakrabarti tries to gauge his characters psychologically. “I try to think in the way my character would think if he was real. This is for any film that I do. His mentality, how he reacts, how he acts... and I did the same for this character. The character (Jatileshwar Mukherjee) I played in Pradhan is a kind that I’ve not met in real life. So, I had to predict the character but it’s so well-written that I didn’t face an issue to do it. There are lots of layers to this character, he is ‘joteel’ (complicated). He’s someone who leaves a good first impression because he puts a façade of being well-mannered and calm, has a smiling face all the time and speaks to people sweetly. So unless you have a clash with him, you’ll never be able to recognise how he is actually. When you have a clash with him or there’s some disagreement, that’s when you’ll realise how crude he can get,” said Anirban.
Soumitrisha, Mamata Shankar, Avijit Sen and Atanu Raychaudhuri
Subhodeep Das and Avijit Sen started writing the story at the location itself. They would travel during the daytime to look for a neighbourhood with families around and write at night. “Family isn’t just about the members, it’s also about the people living in neighbourhoods and we wanted to capture that essence in the film. Despite the nuclear family becoming the norm of the generation, neighbours actually make up a joint family. We spotted one neighbourhood that wasn’t on top of the hill but it’s actually surrounded by mountains, and we really loved it. We were there for a long time and gathered ideas from the neighbourhood and their perspectives. So we’ve tried to breathe that into the film. When we released the poster we gave a slight hint of what kind of a film can Pradhan be. The trailer was designed in such a way that the audience gets an idea of what the story might entail. We can’t reveal everything but what we can understand or predict from the trailer is that Dev is a cop, and there’s a helpless elderly couple being played by Paranda and Mamatadi. The neighbourhood that they live in has a few people who live life with a sense of unity,” said director Avijit Sen.
Producer Atanu Raychaudhuri of Bengal Talkies believes that Pradhan is a one-of-a-kind film. “We always try to release our films during Christmas holidays and with all the love we got for Tonic and Projapoti, we chose Christmas time for the film’s release. I believe that people haven’t gotten the opportunity to walk into the theatres and watch a Bengali movie like Pradhan for a long time now,” said Atanu Raychaudhuri.
Actress Soumitrisha (of Mithai fame) feels that the main challenge is to live up to people’s expectations. “People gave me so much love over my previous works that the need to live up to their expectations and deliver is the major challenge here. The sheer love I have got from my audience creates this hunger in me to do and perform better each time I’m in front of the camera.
“Each character in this movie will be relatable to people in our society. People who’ve got recently married might relate to my character well. All women have a lot of dreams to do something with their lives... some might want to be an actor, a teacher, a dancer or a singer, but after getting married they might get overwhelmed with the duties that fall on their shoulders, something very stereotypical of our society.
“Another thing is that my character has to cope with her husband who is a cop and he has a duty towards society and its people. So, it becomes imperative for the wife to understand the nuances for the relationship to work as well. You’ll be able to see that my character is a strong-willed woman who adapts to life and moves along without breaking,” said Soumitrisha.
Soham also plays a cop in the film. “The chemistry Dev and I share behind the camera has been translated on screen as well. But we enjoyed shooting the scenes... people will get to see two cops having disagreements and clashing over points of view, but then they will also see how they agree and cooperate as one,” said Soham about being Dev’s cop partner in the film.
“This is the first time I’m wearing so many ornaments while playing a role. You can spot how many fingerrings my character wears, it’s almost like he’s addicted to gold. It’s not just the look that’s out of the box but it’s also his dialect and other attributes that I’ll probably be seen doing for the first time. More than a challenge, I think I found the role very interesting because it’s very different from the roles I’ve done before. I can grow as an actor only if I step out of my comfort zone and see if I can do justice to the varying characters and roles I’m offered. Actors love exploring different layers and shades of characters. I fully got to explore it in this film. I loved working with such an ensemble cast,” said Anirban.