Seema Pahwa's directorial Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi won much appreciation at film festivals before it released in theatres in January this year. The film revolved around the family members of a deceased patriarch who reunite for his last rites. Months after Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi's release, Netflix premiered Sanya Malhotra's much-admired film Pagglait directed by Umesh Bist. The audience was quick to notice similarities between the plot of both films and the overall setup too. Seema, who made her directorial debut with Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi has reacted to the comparisons and similarities during an interview with an entertainment portal.
"We made Ram Prasad Ki Tehrvi in 2018 and released it before at MAMI and other film festivals. Pagglait came after that and had some similarities, which was painful to see. The location it was shot at was the same as ours, there were similarities between the characters too. I thought that this was because both films have middle-class families, in which you find the same kinds of characters. Maybe that could’ve been a coincidence but the location being the same was a problem because the audience got confused between the films," Seema told.
Seema said she feels 'cheated' as some people from Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi's team worked on Pagglait too but didn't talk about making changes. "There should’ve been some conversation between us and we could’ve changed some things to make our films more individualistic. There was ignorance on my part too because I found out too late that a film just like ours was being made. I feel cheated because there were people who worked on Pagglait who had also worked on Ram Prasad Ki Tehrvi and who knew about the film. It’s a little surprising that they didn’t see it as a second chance and make some changes. I haven’t spoken to them yet, but it was shocking," Seema added.
Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi starred Naseeruddin Shah, Supriya Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Parambrata Chatterjee, Vinay Pathak, Vikrant Massey and Manoj Pahwa among others. Pagglait also featured Sayani Gupta, Ashutosh Rana, Sheeba Chadha, Shruti Sharma, Raghubir Yadav and Rajesh Tailang among several others.
(Source: Film Companion)
