A film poster of Ashish’s debut film Prague

As a kid, he wanted to be a filmmaker. Fortunately fate had the same plans for him. Few years into advertising, a small film about love and a bit of television later, Ashish R Shukla is ready with his debut film Prague, which hits the theatres on September 6.

Prague, the beautiful capital of the Czech Republic, came into picture when the producer of the film Rohit Khaitan visited the city. While he absolutely loved it, there was something about Prague that followed him back to India. “During his time in Prague, Rohit came across some mysterious energies. The city would be beautiful in the day and gloomy at night. It was quite eerie. So when we met, he asked me to write a script around Prague. Since he wanted a dark, mysterious thriller, the script underwent many changes before it became what it is,” says Shukla.
Once the script was complete, he formally approached Kaminey actor Chandan Roy Sanyal to play the protagonist. For Sanyal, who has worked in films like Faltu, and more recently D-Day, Prague could turn out to be a game changer for him. Shukla tells us that Sanyal was always in his mind when he was developing the script. “I met him when he was rehearsing for a play and I told him that whenever I make a film, he has to act in that. In fact, I wrote the script keeping him in mind.”
Shukla started out as an advertising professional. He assisted ad guru Prahlad Kakar and worked with many A-listers like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Sachin Tendulkar among others before he finally said goodbye to advertising. “It wasn’t satisfying at all. I found it to be superficial. I didn’t have any experience with the product I was trying to sell. So when I quit, I told my boss, ‘I am not leaving your company, I am leaving this profession.’”
Fortunately or unfortunately, soon after he met with an accident and was bed-ridden for four months. But he utilised that time to acquaint himself with global cinema. He watched all sorts of films and learnt the nuances of filmmaking. He was now confident enough to start his journey in cinema. His first was a short film titled The Lock. He uploaded the film on Passion for Cinema, where Anurag “awesome” Kashyap saw it, liked it and called Shukla to write the screenplay for a film on Benaras. “Due to some copyright issues, the project didn’t materialise and that is when Anurag asked me to work on Dev D as the creative head for the film.”
So how was the experience being on sets with the father of radical cinema in India? “It was mind-boggling. His vision is inspiring. Anurag is a director and he doesn’t play a director. He is fearless, relentless and meticulous. He would shoot for 18-20 hours a day and everybody would be so involved with the whole filmmaking process that nobody would complain.”
Shukla also directed a documentary Inside 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack for National Geographic Channel and the first few episodes of Shaitaan for Colors. “Everybody says not so good things about television so I said to myself, ‘Let’s experience the bad.’ I wanted to see what everybody complains about. But I enjoyed it. And I won’t mind going back to television,” he says.
Prague is made on a shoestring budget of a few crores and although Shukla is proud of his work, he complains that small budget films are not taken seriously in our industry. “For me budgets are irrelevant. All it takes is a vision to make a film. Making a film in less money is a challenge but the bigger challenge is to fight the stereotypes.”