Anubhav Sinha is currently in an ‘angry and disheartened’ mood

Director Anubhav Sinha reflected on the noise around his latest film, ‘Bheed’ and said that he isn’t going to avert his eyes from reality. In an interview with a famed magazine, he said that he is currently in an ‘angry and disheartened’ mood, but he isn’t ‘scared’. Asked how he deals with depressive phases, he said, “I stand up and look them in the eyes. I am just staring back.”

The trouble for ‘Bheed’, starring Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar among others, began after the release of the first trailer, which opened with a snippet of PM Narendra Modi’s speech announcing the lockdown, which was ultimately removed from the film, in addition to several swear words and shots from a sex scene. He acknowledged that he ran into ‘some complications’ with the trailer but said that any inferences being made about the films being a criticism of the government and those in charge of making decisions is ‘an overprotective view of I don’t know who’.

Anubhav compared the censorship process with that of his other films: “In ‘Mulk’, I had a 90-minute discussion with the examining committee. Normally, it takes five minutes. In ‘Article 15’, the examining committee had to refer it to the revising committee because they did not have a consensus. Things happened. ‘Thappad’ was the cleanest one in terms of process. Even ‘Anek’ was fine. This one came out; it was written about and it was about a big man that people like to write about.”

“The Cinematograph Act itself? Most acts are open to interpretation. Sometimes, it depends on who’s interpreting that law. In ‘Thappad’, I got away with the F-word with a U/A certificate. This time, I didn’t. I had to change it to ‘damn’. I’m happy to change some. I use a lot of cuss words in my day-to-day life, but I’m not an advocate of it.”