Karan Tejpal had almost given up on his dream to become a director when he stumbled upon the idea of his critically-acclaimed film "Stolen", about two brothers who are forced to confront their privilege after they witness a baby being stolen from an impoverished tribal woman at a small town railway station.
The director, who worked as an assistant on films like “3 Idiots” and “Delhi 6”, said he wrote "Stolen" after he came across a video where two businessmen lost their lives in a lynching because they were mistaken as baby snatchers by the crowd. "Disparate worlds are always clashing and coming together and it's not something unique in itself in India. But the way we have sort of addressed it in 'Stolen' is to create a compelling story out of it, and to have that intersection kind of take our privileged characters to a place where they have a transformation," Tejpal told PTI in a virtual interview.
"We never set out with this idea that we are telling some really unique story about this intersection. But the idea was to tell an honest story about it, which compels you to think about these intersections." After its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, "Stolen" travelled to many international festivals like BFI London, and the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) Produced and co-written by Gaurav Dhingra of Jungle Book Studio, the film features Abhishek Banerjee and Shubham as two brothers and Mia Maelzer as the tribal woman. Harish Khanna and Sahidur Rahaman also star in key roles. The movie released on Prime Video earlier this month.
Tejpal said his personal motto while making a movie is to find the "heart of the story".
"If filmmakers do not find their heart within a story and they don't find that personal link to a story, then that story is never going to have any potency. For me, this project, or for any in the future, I think the hardest part is finding the heart of that story." Banerjee, who plays sheltered rich brat Gautam Bansal in the movie, said his motivations to do the film were simple: he wanted to be part of an action drama.
“I really love the action genre and just wanted to have fun on the set without thinking much... Both Karan and Gaurav had designed the film so well that you could see the film even when they were giving the narration,” he said.
He, however, said being on the "Stolen" set felt like being in a proper acting college.
“This was the most planned film I've ever shot. Not a single minute was wasted. If we are on set, we are doing something productive. And if we are not on set, then still, we are doing something productive, either rehearsing or writing,” he added.
Shubham, who graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India and co-wrote the critically-acclaimed "Eeb Allay Ooo!" with Prateek Vats, said he also loved that the movie was rooted in the action genre.
Shubham's Raman is the empathetic brother who ropes in a reluctant Guatam to help the woman, Jhumpa Mahato, in her perilous journey into the heartland to find her missing baby.
The actor said he was initially worried about coming off as a boring character. "I decided that instead of concentrating on the morality part of it, I would focus on my relationship with my brother? How are my decisions being taken because of my brother? Sometimes these are very complicated, detailed things like if he's saying tea, I will say coffee. It is just that toxic brother relationship, which sometimes leads to problems,” he added.
Melzer said she wanted her portrayal of Jhumpa to be relevant to the real mothers.
"At no point should it come across as if I am trying to enact it. This kind of pain cannot be acted on, that's what I feel. I tried to use my craft to go as close as possible to this feeling and maybe our film did justice to the story. The material, the films Karan gave me to watch and study and the research brought me closer to the role,” she added.
Tejpal admitted that "Stolen" was a difficult film to make though it has found a lot of support from within the industry with filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao and Nikhil Advani boarding it as executive producers.
Dhingra said when Tejpal showed him the video, he felt scared and they decided to work on the movie together. Initially, he said, the director wanted to shoot the movie in Maharashtra but they eventually decided Pushkar in Rajasthan would be more suited.
"The pandemic delayed our film and many on the team fell sick during the shooting but once it was over and the film premiered in Venice, it was like a bullet train and there was no looking back," Dhingra said.
Tejpal also looks back at the experience with a lot of gratitude.
"Making a first film for any filmmaker is an uphill battle. It is something that we all have to fight. Prior to 'Stolen', I had been fighting that fight for a long time, very unsuccessfully, in fact. And just before 'Stolen', I had kind of given up on this (direction) thing. I thought I would give up and become a writer and then the film happened very organically," he said.
"I've been blessed on this journey along the way as the film has given back to me 500 times what I could have ever expected or even imagined."
