After venturing into Marathi cinema as an actor with Bucket List last year, Madhuri Dixit has now backed a movie 15 August in her mother tongue with husband Dr Shriram Nene. The slice-of-life flick, which is currently streaming on Netflix
Mumbai (Pakistan Point News / Online - 03rd April, 2019) After venturing into Marathi cinema as an actor with Bucket List last year, Madhuri Dixit has now backed a movie 15 August in her mother tongue with husband Dr Shriram Nene. The slice-of-life flick, which is currently streaming on Netflix, is set in a Mumbai chawl, where the residents are preparing for the Independence Day flag-hoisting ceremony. However, a couple of zany mishaps occur when one of the inhabitants ends up creating a problem, resulting in the others uniting to get him out of the mess.
The story explores the idea of freedom, both on a higher level as well as on a personal one. And that, says the couple, is what attracted them towards it."We were hearing a lot of scripts, but we kept coming back to this one," recalls, Madhuri, adding that it was the rootedness of the story and the fast-disappearing chawl system that appealed to them. "JB Nagar, where I lived earlier, was not a chawl, but a place where all the neighbours knew each other.
We would come together to celebrate occasions and if somebody needed help, all of us would be there for them. I had a lot of relatives, who resided in chawls and I have lived with them. So, all these characters in the film seemed so familiar. 15 August speaks of personal freedom whom to love, what profession to choose, etc. Finally, we are saying that unity is important and love sets us all free. It was a delicate, layered script, which we thought was beautiful," she adds.
Madhuri admits that the thought of her acting in the film did cross her mind, but she decided not to go ahead with it. "We believe in the purity of the product. There is no point distracting people by embedding yourself for no reason. The expectations from the movie become different then. I don't know what people would have expected even if they had seen me in a cameo or a song," says the diva, and her husband concurs. "It's not like we would never produce anything with her as an actress, but here, we wanted the merit of the spirit, the direction and the acting to stand alone," he states.
While Marathi films have been doing well in the last couple of years, with producers backing quality content, the powerhouse performer says it was an amalgamation of creative satisfaction and good business acumen to produce this project. "Both Ram and I have Maharashtrian roots and we could identify with the script. The characters were so close to home that we thought we would make this script as our first film. The language didn't matter, but since this was a Marathi film, we chose to go with this as we loved the subject," she informs. Ram also reveals that they are in the process of reading and greenlighting other scripts, which may or may not be in Hindi. "It has to be a great story that entertains the audience," he points out.
