Jasmeet K Reen: Pursuing What You Love Will Come With Its Own Set Of Challenges, For Both Male And Female Directors

‘Darlings’ director Jasmeet K Reen has been working in the film industry for quite a long time. From making independent short films to now, making it to the big leagues, she has seen and faced all challenges. While she is now known for directing the Alia Bhatt starrer movie, but her first brush with fame came with short independent films like ‘Lovedale’ and ‘The Right Note’.

Outlook’s Prateek Sur has a quick chat with Jasmeet K Reen about the difficulties of making it successfully as a movie director in the male-dominated film industry.

What sort of challenges does the film industry pose for a female director?

Pursuing what you love, in a field that is highly competitive will come with its own set of challenges, for both male and female directors. Patience and hard work are the key.

Many women filmmakers have opened up in the past saying that whenever they went with a written script or a story, producers never took them seriously. While the same never happened with male directors. Have you ever faced anything similar in your career?

I believe that producers liking a script or not, is their prerogative and it is based on merit.

How easy or difficult was it to get Alia Bhatt to produce 'Darlings'? Was it an instant yes or did you have to make certain changes in order to suit her stardom before she finally came on board?

I pitched the script to Red Chillies. And we together took it to Alia, she connected with the script and agreed to come on board as our Darling Badru and as our Darling producer.

How difficult was it to convince Shefali Shah and Roshan Mathew for that kiss?

I shared my vision for the scene, character motivations, and the effect the kiss would have on Shamshu and Zulfi's relationship moving forward in the film. Shef and Roshan understood how important this moment was for this unusual yet pure bond and went for it.

When you had written the script were there people who had told you not to show the older woman-young boy love angle? Because, such topics are usually considered taboo in Indian films, and you've broken the stereotype by showing the same.

People were surely intrigued by it. The intention was to empower Shamshu and give hope. Where there are men like Hamza, there are men like Zulfi too.

What after 'Darlings' can we see coming from you?

Working on it, abhi.