Elena is mysterious, alcoholic, dark yet innocent

Elena Kazan, who stars in 'John Day' alongside Randeep Hooda and Naseeruddin Shah had an amazing experience shooting for the film. The Hindi and Bengali speaking actor is playing a girl who despite being an alcoholic and having an air of mystery around her, carries a sense of innocence in herself.

Elena was born in Kiev and grew up in Berlin. After completing her higher education in USA she came to Kolkata for work and then soon faced the camera.  About her character she says, "It is this very complexity that drew me in. I have done some work before but playing this part was special since it had to be done truly differently."

Even though her character required her to look drunk, she wanted to look convincing on screen and hence did a lot of homework right. "And one right way of doing that was to keep it all real and behave naturally. You don't see regular drinkers staggering and falling around every now and then. Yes, they are tipsy but then they don't have a stereotypical body language, as has been demonstrated in countless films. My director Ahishor (Solomon) just wanted me to underplay it all and given the fact that I am also supposed to carry dark shades made it all the more interesting. Yes, my character has an issue but then this is not the only thing about her. She is drowned in love more than alcohol."

The director of the movie Ahishor wanted someone who wasn't too familiar with the audience as her character is enigmatic. "I didn't want someone with any kind of image," says Ahishor, "There is certain kind of mystery attached to this character and had I taken a known face, it would have backfired. I must have auditioned more than 30 girls and ultimately chose her since adds on to the mystery and her core persona too has a little bit of edge to her." He further adds, "The fact that she was so convincing as an alcoholic further made me sure that she was right for the job."

'John Day' releases on 13^th September and is a co-production of K. Asif, Anjum Rizvi and Aatef A Khan.