Why a film like Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar can't be shot during the pandemic!

Dibakar Banerjee with Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra on sets of Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar. Picture courtesy/PR

Producer and director of Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (SAPF), which releases this Friday, has an interesting take on how a film like this cannot be made during the pandemic. He says, "I am so happy that in the middle of COVID, I am releasing one of my films which captures the outside so much. It's all about the outdoors, the roads of Delhi, the hills of Uttarakhand, the buses, the train stations, so you are really outside and you are with people, the texture, the locations, the mountains, the hills, the bus stations, the Gurgaon highways."

The acclaimed director adds, "I am so happy that, the film is releasing right now because when we see this it's like something that we can't show right now, something that we can't shoot right now. It's like glimpses of what was pre-COVID. It is such an amazing glimpse and such a nice sort of historical moment. It's a very, very pre-COVID film."

The filmmaker in an earlier interview talked about how he made Arjun and Parineeti, who are good friends off-screen, hate each other on-screen. The talented film-maker revealed, "No one looks pretty when your life is being choked out of you. No one looks their best when being slapped in the backseat of a car in the middle of nowhere in the dead of the night as a huge threatening stranger asks you questions you don't know the answers to. There are many in India who know how this feels. But not Parineeti and Arjun. I had to figure a way of making them angry, bewildered and scared and alien to each other which is why I had to bar them from meeting each other socially till they met for the first time on the sets in character."

Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is a raw and edgy suspense thriller that pits Arjun Kapoor versus Parineeti Chopra. Arjun plays the role of a Haryanvi cop and Pari plays a corporate woman from New Delhi. It is being distributed worldwide by Yash Raj Films.