Anubhav Sinha had absolutely no problem sailing through the Central Board Of Certification(CBFC) with his new politically volatile drama Anek. Set in the North East the tense drama tackles headlong ,the racism and cultural segregation of people in that part of India.
Anubhav says he was surprised at how easy it was to sail through the censor board. “They didn’t touch anything that mattered in my film. Only at the beginning of the film there’s a brawl sequence in front of a club where some expletives were used. The censor jury asked me if cutting that would make any difference to the film.I said it would make no difference , and that was that.”
It has always been the same with the censors. “I’ve never had any problems getting through the CBFC. Even my most difficult films Article 15 or Mulk were treated with utmost sensitivity by the censor board.”
Anek is already being hailed as Anubhav Sinha’s best work to date.
“That’s what I was told after Mulk ,Article 15 and Thappad.And those who have seen my next film Bheed which opens in November are saying it is better than Anek,” laughs Anubhav refusing to take the compliment on being the most relevant filmmaker of the country, seriously.
When you compliment his work and compare it to the films by Costa Gavras and Govind Nihalani his spontaneous reaction is, “Shut up! I am nowhere near these people.I am just doing the cinema that I believe in. For the first eighteen years of my career I made what critics like you call fluff stuff. I don’t disown any of the films that I made when I started with Tum Bin. 18 years is the age of maturity , that’s when the I metamorphosed as a filmmaker. I don’t disown any of what I’ve done before Mulk. It was all part of my growth as an individual and a filmmaker.”
