'Zindaggi Rocks', a film with women at helm: Sushmita

Mumbai, Sep 23 (IANS) Sushmita Sen is eagerly awaiting the release of her new film "Zindaggi Rocks", a film she enjoyed shooting due to the predominantly all-women crew.

"'Zindaggi Rocks' is a rocking film with women at the helm of affairs. If Anurradha (Prasad) is the producer, Tanuja (Chandra) is the director and Moushumiji (Chatterjee) and I are the actors.

"In fact Moushumiji has played a double role for the first time in her career stretching almost three decades. I could learn a lot after observing her at work at close quarters," Sushmita told IANS.

The actress goes into raptures over Tanuja Chandra's directorial skills.

"Tanuja is one of our intelligent filmmakers who likes to project realism in her films even while maintaining the format and the idiom of commercial mainstream Hindi Cinema.

"What I like about Tanuja is the fact that she is a very obedient teacher who picks up the colloquial dialogues, which we tend to use in our day-to-day life. The comfort level I had as an actor was very evident when I worked with Tanuja in 'Zindaggi Rocks'."

The film, which is slated for a worldwide release Oct 6, is about the love story between a rock star Kria, played by Sushmita, and doctor Sooraj Rihan (Shiney Ahuja).

Sushmita eulogises Chandra: "I think 'Zindaggi Rocks' is Tanuja's finest work till date. If you as an actor have a personal equation with Tanuja, half the battle is won on the sets. Tanuja is a very good actor too and is very clear about what exactly she wants as a director from you.

"Technically Tanuja is quite a progressive director and sets out to juxtapose between close ups as well as cuts. Her strength is to give you several layers when you perform even when the scene is a silent one."

The actress also gives full marks to the producer for giving Tanuja a free hand to extract the best out of all the performers in "Zindaggi Rocks".

"Anurradha is an experienced producer even though this is her first film as a producer because she has to her credit several quality TV serials.

Sushmita admits that she could identify herself with the character of Kria to a large extent. Kria, according to Sushmita, is loud, mad, pathologically friendly, a musical genius, an extremely popular singer and also a woman who does not take "no" for an answer.

"Zindaggi Rocks" can be described as a mature love story between Kria - a rock singer with the responsibility of bringing up her 12-year-old son, who is smarter than men twice his age - and doctor Sooraj Rihan.

Sushmita confesses that all that she did to get into the skin of her character was to question her director and follow her instructions besides, of course, using her natural instincts.

"Whenever I tended to go off the track, Tanuja used to bring me back to the nuances of the character of Kria. Kria isn't just a rock-star because to her, being a rock star is just a way of life. Life is a celebration for her and the film has been narrated from the point of view of the doctor."

Sushmita seems to have consolidated her position among women filmmakers in Bollywood. She has earlier worked with Meghna Gulzar in "Filhaal", Farah Khan in "Main Hoon Na" and Kalpana Lajmi in "Chingaari".

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Zindaggi Rocks