Filmmaker Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari says she and her husband, Dangal director Nitesh Tiwari, don’t carry the baggage of their success to their home.
Nitesh co-directed Chillar Party and went on to helm Bhoothnath Returns before giving blockbuster, Dangal . Ashwiny made her directorial debut with Nil Battey Sannata , which received immense critical acclaim and went on to become a box office success.
In an interview to PTI , Ashwiny says, “We never carry success at home, we leave it behind. We follow the Hindi saying ‘raat gayi baat gayi’ and just keep it simple.” The filmmaker is aware that it’s difficult to maintain a lifestyle which is detached from showbiz but says they have chosen to keep their lives normal.
“We may now have a few more selfie clicks on the road but apart from that we haven’t allowed anything else to change in our lives. We don’t even stay in the circuit of Bollywood, we stay far away. It’s good to be this way,” she adds.
Her latest work, Bareilly Ki Barfi , that released on last Friday, brings back Nitesh, who had also written Nil Battey Sannata as one of the writers. The idea of Bareilly Ki Barfi , Ashwiny says, came from a French book titled Ingredients of Love.
“It’s not a faithful adaptation at all. Since the one line idea came from there, it was only right to give them credit. It’s a French book so you can’t adapt it here.” The director says her film is not a “hardcore” romance like the book and is more of a “romedy in a very Woody Allen space.”
“I’d be happy if someone says there is a desi Woody Allen born in our country after the film. He is one of my favourite filmmakers along with Sai Paranjape. It’s sad we have forgotten her and the kind of cinema she made,” Ashwiny says.
Ashwiny says the critical acclaim for her film Nil Battey Sannata was great, but feels a movie should also do well at the box office. The director says it is important for such films to make money as it would encourage producers to back more content-driven films about women.
“Producers are open to stories which revolve around women because the audience has opened up. As creative people, we can come up with 100 stories but we need producers who will trust us and say lets do it. That’s very important.”
