Nandita Das directorial debut- Firaaq to release in India

Nandita Das has been associated with off-beat and meaningful cinema as an actress and has done a good job. Now she is putting her directorial skills to test in Firaaq. The movie is packed with some of the legends of Bollywood - Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal and Deepti Naval which is a dream team to work with and they too seem completely impressed by the first time director.

"The film is actually set one month after the Gujarat riots. So the film is not in the thick of the violence, there is no violence at all,” says Nandita Das.

Firaaq revolves around the Gujarat genocide of 2002 and gives an insight into how violence could affect our inner and outer lives. The movie has received accepted globally in several festivals including the Toronto and London Film Festival and was recently awarded the Best Film at the Kara Film Festival in Karachi, Pakistan.

The team hopes their film gets a similar response back home as well.

Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak play on screen parents of Imran Khan

You are always comfortable to act with people you know. No wonder why, Imran found it easy to act in Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na. His best friend's (Imaad) parents Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak play his on screen parents.

For the first time in their career, Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah are coming together as husband and wife in the film, Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na. Last time we saw them together was in the film, Mirch Masala in 1987 but they were not paired opposite each other.

Ratna Pathak Shah's role has been actually modeled on Nuzhat Khan, Imran's real life mother. The relationship that mother son share is more like friends like in his real life. Interestingly, Imaad and Imran have grown up together sharing birthday cakes and clothes and now they share their parents. Imaad too had recently made his debut in his father's directorial debut film, Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota.

Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah readily agreed to play Imran's parents in his debut film and extended their real life relationship to reel life especially for him.