Dibakar Banerjee takes the year off for baby

Mumbai, April 3 (IANS) Dibakar Banerjee won't be starting another film till next year as he is taking the rest of the year off to get to know his baby daughter Ira.

'Otherwise she'll never be able to accept me as anything but an alien in her life. At the moment she's seven months old. I want to spend some months with her and become an integral part of her life,' he said.

Movies can wait. 'I won't be starting another film till next year. I need to be home, to let my daughter get used to my presence around the house.'

Reacting to the charge by short-filmmaker Abhay Kumar that the first segment of Dibakar's film 'Love Sex Aur Dokha' is similar to Abhay's short film 'Udaan' Dibakar says, 'Of course there are similarities! My film and his have adopted the age-old traditional 'Laila-Majnu' format where boys meets girls, they fall in love, elope and get killed by irate parents. If anyone should be upset with me it's the person who wrote 'Laila Majnu'.'

Dibakar points out that so many Hindi films have borrowed the star-crossed lovers format.

'Raj Kapoor's 'Bobby', Mansoor Khan's 'Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak'...there was even a film featuring Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval 'Ek Baar Chale Aao'...Yeah I saw Abhay's film and it's certainly similar to mine.'

A refreshing change from the denials that filmmakers serve up when charged with similarities to another work.

Dibakar added: 'If you look at my other film 'Oye Lucky Lucky Oye' some shots were taken from the way Martin Scorsese shoots his scenes. It's the way we all function as filmmakers. There have to be sources of inspiration.'