After establishing herself as a thinking actress, she turned filmmaker with Liar’s Dice, tracing the socio-political conditions in India. The gamble paid off when the film won honours at the National Awards and became India’s official entry to the Oscars. Geetu Mohandas is now gearing up to direct her second film titled Insha’ Allah with the tagline, In pursuit of Akbar, which is also written by her.
The script of Insha' Allah has been selected by the Sundance Lab which chooses only seven projects from around the world in a year. Geetu explains, "They have been mentoring me on the script and we had a session in Goa where all the International filmmakers had come down and they read the script. The thread of the film is about a boy who is in search of Akbar and will be shot in Lakshadweep and Mumbai. I will be shooting it post monsoon and the same team of Liar’s Dice will be a part of this film."
The camera will be cranked by husband Rajeev Ravi and it will be a bilingual in Hindi and Malayalam.On whether she would be retaining any of her cast from Liar’s Dice, Geetu says, “That is the big suspense and I don’t want to reveal anything about who is playing Akbar. I want to keep everyone guessing because I want to shoot very quietly and don’t want any big excitement around the actor. I would rather finish the film and then announce the actor. I am personally very excited to see how this actor is going to portray Akbar and the film will have extensive VFX effects.” After some nudging, prodding and cajoling, Geetu does not cave in, “It is not a newcomer and people will be intrigued seeing this actor in the role of Akbar.”
About the title, Geetu states that it is something very poetic, beautiful and also has relevance to the subject adding, “I believe it is very timely. This is a word my father used very commonly and just brings a lot of happiness and positivity to me.”
Being nominated for the Oscars has brought about a change. She explains, “It gave me a lot of headache and pressure! People just do their first film and move on to the next but for me the next step is to do even better. That scares me because as a creative person no one wants to be in a space where they be challenged. I unleashed all the pressures and tensions while writing the script of Insha’ Allah.”
