Titli about patriarchy and violence in family: Behl

Behl assisted director Dibakar Banerjee on Oye <g data-gr-id="28">Lucky Lucky</g> Oye and co-wrote Love Sex Aur Dhokha (LSD) before making his feature debut. Now, Dibakar has turned producer for Behl’s Titli with Yash Raj Films.

Behl says he was writing another film before <g data-gr-id="25"><g data-gr-id="26">Titli</g></g> but he abandoned it midway.

“I was writing another film for a <g data-gr-id="38">year</g> but I could not make it. I realised that it was a dishonest attempt. A lot was going wrong in my personal life and in panic, I was trying to make just any film. 

This led to a reassessment and I realised that whatever I write next has to be personal and come from my own experience,” Behl told in an interview.

The period of introspection led to <g data-gr-id="33">Titli</g>, which he co-wrote with Sharat Katariya, who made his directorial debut this year with winsome love story “Dum Laga Ke Haisha”. Behl says they kept asking questions, raising doubts and adding details that came from his own experiences to the movie.

“Initially, I wanted to write about this young boy wanting to run away from an elder, oppressive brother which was directly related to some of my experiences while growing up. I had a strained and difficult relationship with my father like many other young boys in North India. “But a completely different thing opened up and we realised that what we thought was a film about oppression, is about family rhythm, patriarchy and circularity of same images and themes.” 

The movie, starring Ranvir Shorey, Shashank Arora, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Amit Sial, and Lalit Behl, will release on October 30. After <g data-gr-id="42">Titli</g>, his next project is “Agra”. The script is already in Film Bazaar Goa that runs parallel to International Film Festival of India. “Agra is about this young man who is madly in love with this woman and he is desperately trying to prove to his family that she actually exists.”