Nawazuddin excited to play Manto

Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui is excited to bring the life of Pakistan’s short story writer Sadat Hassan Manto alive on the silver screen through actor and filmmaker Nandita Das’s project titled Manto. Calling it an “interesting project”, the actor says he was drawn to the “interesting challenge of doing a period drama”.

Nandita will be tracing the life of Manto in her new directorial, which also focuses on the time of partition. And recently at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, the critically acclaimed actor announced that Nawazuddin will play the title role in Manto. “Manto was a very famous writer in the 1940s-1950s and I am excited to play him making this a rather interesting project. When Nandita discussed this with me at Cannes, I was drawn to the interesting challenge of doing a period drama,” Nawazuddin said in a statement. 

He attended the film gala as his film Raman Raghav 2.0, which is based on Mumbai’s notorious serial killer Raman Raghav, was screened at the fest. The actor won many plaudits for his gripping act in filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s film, which narrates the story of the serial killer, spree in Mumbai in the 1960s.