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Issue:January' 2018

BOLLYWOOD

Attaining new heights

Santosh Mehta

Sohaila Kapur Sohaila Kapur says she’d love to direct a Bollywood film some day. She has already made a mark in theatre and played character roles under top directors.
Sohaila Kapur is a wellknown writer, theatre director and actor. Besides, she happens to be late Dev Anand’s niece and sister of famous filmdirector Shekhar Kapur. She started her career writing articles for newspapers and went on to make documentaries. Her Indian Witch Hunt won the National Geographic best film award in 2004 and has been telecast several times on Discovery.
She is also a playwright. Her maiden venture, a musical called Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, premiered at the prestigious Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 2002. The play won the Herald Devil award and had favourable reviews in leading newspapers. It was performed at various venues in Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Dubai, Muscat, Kuala Lumpur, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Toronto and Vancouver. Besides her own plays, she has specially written The Monkey Manand and The Great Indian Wedding for her brother, film-maker Shekhar Kapur. She also adapted The Ramayana for the American movie channel, HBO.
Sohaila started working for Bollywood films in 2015 with her role in Kabir Khan’s Phantom, playing a distraught Pakistani widow who loses her son to militants. After ‘Phantom’ she acted in ‘Daasdev’ directed by veteran film-director Sudhir Mishra. The word ‘dev’ seems to be a recurring theme, as she played a role based on novelist Sarat 1917 Bengali novel Devdas.

Sohaila started working for Bollywood films in 2015 with her role in Kabir Khan’s Phantom, playing a distraught Pakistani widow who loses her son to militants. After ‘Phantom’ she acted in ‘Daasdev’ directed by veteran film-director Sudhir Mishra. The word ‘dev’ seems to be a recurring theme, as she played a role based on novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhayay’s 1917 Bengali novel Devdas.

It’s the first time she played a bold and powerful role as a woman politician who has lot of courage and easily connects with common people through her own capacity. As a Sushila Devi ‘s character Sohaila brilliantly performed the particular role and it was interesting to have this kind of different role, says the actress.

Before getting a role as a politician she was worried because she had not acted such role earlier and it was quite challenging, , says Sohaila.

Incidentally, Daasdev was shot in Lucnow and also in the royal palace, a heritage building with mellowed interiors. However, playing a politician role as a Sushila Devi) was quite powerful and she got much appreciation after the film got released.

Sohaila has worked with several noted film-directors such as Govind Nihlani, theatre –director Barry John along with leading actresses such as Aditi Rao hydari, Saurabh Shukla, Richa Chhada, Rahul Bhatt, Vipin Sharma, Dilip Tahil and Anurag Kashyup among others. All of them are brilliant and performed good roles.

Dev Anand Shekhar Kapur Sudhir Mishra

Sohalia says, from a long time, she wanted to work with him and he saw her performance in several plays and decided to cast her as Sushila Devi who has a role as politician.

Sohaila says ,” This was the first time he had mentioned about her brilliant performance and it thrilled me. Secondly, my brother (Shekhar Kapur) liked my performance a lot and he has spoken to his friends about my role.”

Sohaila has been in the glamorous profession from several years. Theatre is her favourite. She has directed many interesting plays and one of them is ‘Bebe Ka Chamba’.

After ‘Bebe Ka Chamba’ SufiBhakti plays are her memorable ones.

Everybody has their own favourite heroes. She loves Stephen Spielberg and Vishal Bhardwaj. Both are great storytellers.

She is proud that she is Dev Anand’s niece and Shekhar Kapur’s sister.

Now a days web series is getting much popular. Many directors are working on webseries. She is shooting for two web-series Bhaukaal, directed by Jatin Wagle, and Leila directed by Deepa Mehta for Netflix.