Prosenjit to don director’s hat again

Bengali superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee, whose Bollywood venture “Traffic” hit theatres last week, is set to don the director’s cap again after a gap of 18 years for a content rich Bengali film for the all-India audience.

The multi-faceted performer last directed “Aami Sei Meye” in 1998. He also starred in the film besides Rituparna Sengupta, Ranjit Mallick and Jaya Prada. “I have two scripts ready. One of which I wish to direct myself. It will be done in 2016. If not then in 2017,” Prosenjit said.

“I wish to direct a film catering to the all India-audience based from here (Kolkata). Most of the technicians and actors will be from here-- we have such a large pool of talent-- with some taken from Mumbai,” he said.

53-year-old Prosenjit, who has been leading Kolkata’s film industry for over 30 years, said he believes in challenging to himself in every five-six years.

“I want to give a lift to my performance level. If we don’t do that, we will be stuck in just one level,” said the veteran actor-producer. Among his Bollywood projects, while the Rajesh Pillai-directed “Traffic” was released on May 6, “3dev”, helmed by Ankush Bhatt, is expected to hit the 

screens soon.

Prosenjit said talks are on for a film on Indo-Pak border and it will be finalised in two-three days.

“It’s a beautiful film and yes, again themed on border in a way.” 

Meanwhile, the Prosenjit-Rituparna Sengupta pair that churned out numerous blockbusters in the ‘90s has teamed up again after 15 years in “Praktan”, to be released on May 27. After delivering back to back hits, the two suddenly stopped working together. But those were potboilers and the content of Bengali films has changed over the years.

“We had been the most successful pair no doubt. Our images had been larger than life. (But) with the change in content of Bengali films at present, we are not doing typical mainstream films anymore,” Prosenjit said.

“Both me and Ritu have evolved as actors in all these years. Both of us have turned up in different genre films in the past decade. She has evolved as an actor on set immensely but as a person she remains the same as she was 15 years back,” he said.

Rituparna said working with Prosenjit, whom she respected lot as a senior and actor, has always been an opportunity to learn and they understood each other as actors.