'Apurva' director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat says he wanted to showcase resilience of a 'girl-next-door'
Nikhil Nagesh Bhat says he wanted his latest film 'Apurva' to be a cautionary tale for those who consider women «the weakest link» of society. To drive the message home, the writer-filmmaker said he conceived the Chambal-set story as a thriller as he believes the genre is consumed a lot by the audience.
Starring Tara Sutaria in the title role, 'Apurva' is the story of an ordinary woman who faces extraordinary circumstances and will do anything to survive.
The film also features Abhishek Banerjee, Rajpal Yadav, and Dhairya Karwa.
«In a film like 'Apurva', our society is very misogynistic. What I wanted to tell (with this film) is that 'Don't think women are the weakest link'.
Don't treat them like that because you never know if a woman rises you're in for trouble.
»If that message needs to be told in a way that's acceptable that's why it's a thriller because it's (a genre) that you consume a lot. That's the kind of films which I want to say," Bhat told PTI in an interview here.
The filmmaker, whose another thriller 'Kill' received rave reviews at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), said he wrote the script for «Apurva» back in 2009.
«Unfortunately, a lot of incidents like this have been happening in our country and outside. The idea of the film is that you are having a very good time in your life and you are in a very happy state and suddenly one incident happens and it just changes everything in that matter of a second… This is how life is.
One small incident just changes (everything).
»To put a girl-next-door in this situation and give that option that you can fight back is extremely important as a message with a lot of entertainment. It is intense but there's a lot of entertainment, banter with
