My Story director Roshni Dinaker: 'Want to use cinema as a medium to study people's behaviour'

When Roshni Dinaker decided to don the director’s cap with over a decade of experience as a costume designer in the Kannada, Tamil and Telugu film industry, she didn’t have any second thoughts and wanted to use the medium to tell stories that mattered. In this exclusive chat with Firstpost, Roshni opened up about her just released directorial debut film My Story, the experience of working with Prithviraj and Parvathy, and her next two projects. Her decision to turn director was very impulsive, says Roshni, who didn’t nurture any long-time desire to don the director’s hat. “It was a very instinctive decision and not something that was planned. I shared a story idea to Shanker Ramakrishna, who turned into a one-line story for a film. Shanker went on to develop the idea into a full-fledged story and that’s how My Story was born.” My Story, which hit the screens on 6 July, is the story of Jay, a debut filmmaker, and Tara, an established actor, and how they fall in love. Talking more about the project and the inspiration behind the story, Roshni said: “This is a journey of human life. There are people who travel with you in life, touch our lives deeply and stay in our memories and influence our lives in some ways. These can be the most common people we meet in our daily lives. Sometimes, even when we’re not in touch with them, they’re still travelling with us emotionally. Each person has his or her own story with someone they life. My Story is such a tale of two people.” [caption id=“attachment_4688841” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] My Story poster/Image from Twitter.[/caption] Roshni was hell-bent on working with Prithviraj and Parvathy. The project went on the floors in November 2016 in Lisbon. Explaining the reason behind the delay, she said: “We shot for a month and then had to stop shooting in December 2016 due to the weather. It gets extremely cold between December and March in Lisbon, and we had to stop shooting. We resumed shoot from April but Prithvi couldn’t join us till June as he was stuck in Scotland in another project. I was working two of the busiest actors of the industry and they had their own commitments. I had to adjust my dates according to their availability and I didn’t mind because I wanted to work with them.” Roshni is all praise for her lead actors. “The best part about Prithvi and Parvathy is that they don’t act, they just live their characters. They just react to a scene and situation in their most natural self and that’s what makes their performances realistic. Both of them complemented each other so well. I had so much fun working with them.” Talking about the road ahead and her directorial plans, Roshni confirmed she has two new projects in the offing. First is an Indian-English film Metamorphosis, which will also be made in three south Indian languages. The second project is titled You. Both the films are about people and relationship. “I want to use cinema to study the micro behavior of people. Metamorphosis is about three women from different walks of life who face similar problems but each one deals with them differently. There are three types of people in this world. First type is those who crib and cry for everything and die. Second type is those who become manipulative because something happened to them. Third type is those who initially crib, but eventually fight back and revolt. These three women fall in either of these categories. You, on the other hand, will be a romantic drama that’ll delve deep into human emotions.”