Director Srijit Mukherji revealed that his upcoming film ‘Zulfiqar’ is about the underworld of Kolkata.     

“My next film is an amalgamation of two plays written by William Shakespeare: one is Julius Caesar and the other is Antony and Cleopatra. The story deals with the underworld of Kolkata,” he shared.     

The national award winning director’s previous venture was Rajkahini, which was made in a grand scale and had an ensemble cast and Zulfiqar too has the same.  

When quizzed why such subject inspires him, he quipped, “I think efforts should be made to take the Bengali films out of the four walls of a drawing room. Movies have been made on relationships and will be made again in the future. I feel different subjects should also be explored like period drama and partition. Not only this, there should also be an effort to make sports, horror and science fiction based films.”   

Talking about the ensemble cast, he said, “This is a sheer coincidence. There are so many characters in this film as it is an amalgamation of two stories and every character is larger than life.”  

Some of the actors who will be seen in Zulfiqar include Prosenjit Chatterjee, Dev, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Jisshu U Sengupta, Ankush, Kaushik Sen, Rahul Banerjee, Nusrat Jahan, Paoli Dam and June Maliah.

The director was present at the music album launch of Sahina, who is a renowned singer in Bangladesh. Titled ‘Durbine Chokh’, it is her first ever Indian album which she launched in the city of joy, Kolkata.  

Praising this initiative of launching Bangladeshi singer’s album in India, he opined, “Music has nothing to do with all the political barbed wires that are placed here and there; it rises above all these. Music has no country, no atlas and no map. One cannot restrict music and thus I think it is a great initiative.”  

 Good luck Srijit!