“Ram Kamal is a task master,” says lead actor Rohit Bose Roy who recently wrapped the last schedule of Broken Frame in Kolkata. After the success of Cakewalk, Season’s Greetings and Rickshawala now director Ram Kamal Mukherjee is all geared to make festival rounds with his next Hindi film Broken Frame based on his own novel Long Island Iced Tea. “I have known Ram Kamal since his early days of journalism. Suddenly I noticed that he turned into a filmmaker and I happened to watch his film Cakewalk with Esha Deol and Season’s Greetings with Celina Jaitly. That’s when I wrote to him that I would love to work with him someday. And after a couple of months he approached me with this film, which was a fantastic subject,” says Rohit Bose Roy.
This will be Ram Kamal’s fourth consecutive film to be shot in the city of joy. “Trust me, this was not preplanned,” says the director. “It just happened that all my films so far have been based in Kolkata. Maybe because of my roots and comfort zone. Though shooting in Kolkata is not an easy task with so many parameters forcefully thrown upon us by the management.”
Broken Frame deals with the journey of a married couple who is planning to celebrate their wedding anniversary and due to some course of events something goes terribly wrong on the same celebration night. What went wrong between the two is the crux of the story. “I feel Rohit is a fantastic actor. He was well prepared with his character and dialogues. He is one of those rare actors who gets deep into the character and stays involved till the last day of the shoot. I am glad that we got to work together as a team. Rohit is like an elder brother who helped in improvising shots with his valuable inputs,” says Ram Kamal.
Ritabhari plays the female lead and she has been working on many regional and national films lately. “I have seen her work with Anurag Kashyap in Fool For Love and her Bengali film Bhrambha Janen Gopon Kommoti. She is an extremely talented actor. During the script narration she had jotted down points which she wanted to discuss and once we cleared her doubts she was fully into the character,” says the director.
Screenplay by Sameer Satija the film has music by Shhailendra Kkumar. The film is shot by Modhura Palit in Kolkata and produced by Aritra Das, Sarbani Mukherjee and Gaurav Daga. “Shooting in Kolkata was not easy, though we shot much before the Bengal election and second wave Covid. The subject required a certain grandeur and look which we could achieve because of our teamwork. Thankfully the film was based mostly indoors so we took enough precautions for our cast and crew members,” says producer Aritra Das and Gaurav Daga.
Ram Kamal’s book Long Island Iced Tea (published by Leadstart Publishing) is a collection of eight short stories and he picked the first chapter of his book Broken Frame. Was there any reason behind opting for this story out of eight? “Yes, this story had an instant connection with the readers. Though I had to make few cosmetic changes for screen adaptation. Moreover I always wanted to tell these stories with different directors on screen, but somehow it didn’t happen,” says Ram Kamal.