Dark and gritty — these two words define the trailer of Athhoi. Directed by Arna Mukhopadhyay, who staged this play for the first time on March 5, 2016, Athhoi has been adapted for the screen. Athhoi’s story, based on themes of loyalty, jealousy, betrayal and revenge, is inspired by the classic Shakespearean tragedy Othello. We can see Anirban Bhattacharya playing the anti-hero.

“We performed this play for the last seven years since its debut at Rabindra Sadan seven years back and both Arna and I spoke about adapting it for the screen. As an actor, the role (based on Gogo from Othello), opened up plenty of avenues for me, a lot of thoughts and points of view, and made space for honing the skills and craft of an actor. I was rather excited to find out that Athhoi is being adapted into a film, which automatically allows the character to be explored more and I tried my best to find the different layers of my role, rediscovering it afresh every time,” said Anirban Bhattacharya at the trailer launch of the film at Kolkata Centre for Creativity.

“This is the first time that I played a character on screen, which I already have played on stage a lot of times before,” he added.

The film traces Athhoi’s journey (played by the director himself), who is yet to discover himself and we see lines blurring between his reality and delusions. Anirban plays the role of Gogo and his character is called Anagra Chatterjee. Athhoi, who’s gullible, falls prey to Anagra’s vengeance and cunning plots and thereby his wife Diyamona’s (Sohini Sarkar) life stands ruined. The film also stars Ditipriya Roy, Arpan Ghoshal, Koushik Banerjee, Mimi Dutta, Sumit Panja, Soumik Haldar, Amit Chatterjee and Sanglap Bhowmik.

The film’s background score highlights the haunting theme that runs within. A tale of love ends up reeking of betrayal, suspicion and death. “I watched the play and then performed it in the theatres eventually. I was speechless the first time I saw the play and I was overwhelmed to become a part of it, and I feel the same about being a part of the film,” said Sohini Sarkar. “The soul and character of both the film and the play remain the same. However, there are some organic changes. Times have changed, the world has become a darker place, and even we as human beings have lost our innocence. The complications are reflected in the way we act,” said Arna. “There’s a soul connection and I made good memories and progress while working for Athhoi,” added Sohini.