Shekhar Kapur to take Paani out of India

The filmmaker says Indian producers don't feel strongly about the water scarcity issue; meanwhile is all set to revolutionise cinema with a 13-minute short on Buddha.

Shekhar Kapur whose futuristic fantasy drama, Paani, has been in the making for 11 years, has finally decided not to set it in India. The film which deals with water scarcity and features Sushant Singh Rajput and Ayesha Kapoor in the lead now has been shelved several times in the past for various reasons.

The Bandit Queen (1994) director is now planning to shoot it abroad in 2016 and is looking for international funding. "Indian producers don't feel strongly about the issue of water scarcity so I didn't want to take the risk of making the film with such makers," Kapur told Mirror, adding that he is looking for a producer who not only believes in him but also the premise of the film.

Meanwhile, the 69-year-old writer-director has started working on a 13-minute film Buddha. It is on the period of enlightenment when Siddhartha distanced himself from all materialistic things to find the true meaning of life. "It will help the viewer enter his mind, look at the world through his eyes and come back," Kapur explained, adding that this will be possible when the viewer wears a 'Virtual Reality' headset that offers him the opportunity to choose perspectives and even situations he wants to view. "Every viewer can watch the same film differently. 'Immersive Viewing' is the next big thing and makes you wonder about the future of content creation," raved the filmmaker who was the guest speaker at the session on VR Technology and New Film Narratives session at the NFDC Film Bazaar in Goa on Monday.

Best known for films like Masoom, Mr India and Elizabeth, which was nominated in seven categories at the Academy Awards, Kapur admitted that he had always wanted to make a film on Buddha but realised that a three-hour narrative could be too long in today's times while a shorter format would find it difficult to get screen time. "There are only 8000 screens in India and if one big Bollywood film takes up 5000 screens, there is little left for the remaining 15 languages. The only way our cinema can survive is by empowering our filmmakers," he reasoned.

He pointed out that today everyone carries a screen in his pocket and can watch films on the handset. "People all over the world are creating content on their smartphones and will soon be using the VR technology to customise film viewing further. It helped me explore what happened to Buddha during and after his enlightenment," he added. "I'm trying to give the audience a feeling of what could have happened in his mind, how he saw the world and, how it changed for him."