I don't like preachy films: Dipesh Jain on exploring child violence in 'Gali Guleiyan'

"Gali Guleiyan" has been well-received by critics for its unique approach to an issue as sensitive as child violence. Director of the film Dipesh Jain says he was originally planning to make a documentary on the subject, but decided to develop it into a feature as he did not want to be preachy in his treatment.

The director said the initial idea of the film was to explore the theme of entrapment but the story needed more to go beyond the "surface level".

"Dramatics is either by exaggeration or by contrast. What is interesting is that you have a place which is bustling with people and the contrast is that there is a person who is all alone and trapped.

"The film is very claustrophobic and it explores that feeling. But physical entrapment is on a very surface level. We needed more to tell the story and to make it layered. I wasn't able to crack that. But then I did some research on child abuse and child violence wanting to make a documentary about it," Jain told PTI in an interview.

But the director soon junked the idea of making a documentary and instead opted for the feature film route, hoping that the key takeaway from it would be about "good parenting".

"I am someone who does not like preachy films and that kind of storytelling. I thought if I develop this subject into a documentary, then it will be preachy and conventional. Documentaries tend to talk about social topics.

"I wanted to tell a story of entrapment with a parallel story of a boy getting beaten up. I thought that if the stories do well and people are engaged till the end, then they will also get a message about good parenting," Jain said.

He cited the works of Hollywood legends Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick and Michael Haneke, saying that they let the audience interpret the message from their films.

"If you look at the works of all these directors, you will notice that they are not saying the message. It is there for the audience. If it's a good piece of art, everybody will take a different message out of it and it will start a conversation," Jain said.

The director said he wanted Manoj Bajpayee, Ranvir Shorey, Neeraj Kabi and Shahana Goswami, to be his core cast, and believes it was the script that made them say yes to the film.

"When I spoke with my casting director, he asked me about my A choice of cast. I said Manoj, Ranvir, Neeraj and Shahana. When he asked me about choice B, I said I haven't thought about it because I have written the script for them only.

"He told me that for debutante director, it is big cast and they have never starred together. I told him to send the script to the actors and then see," Jain said.

As an indie film, "Gali Guleiyan" also had its fair share of struggles and the director said that most difficult phase was the distribution.

"All of us were working to get it released and it was not an individual struggle. We got support from the press and the social media as there was lot of buzz around it.

"The biggest struggle in distribution is how many screens you get. They don't give good showtime to our films. It is either 9 am in the morning or 12 am in the night. Our audience work in the day and then they would decide to go watch the film. There are people who want to see the film because the trailer alone got more than 4 millions views online," Jain said.

The film released Friday.