Rajat Kapoor: Marketing independent films is tougher than making them

To celebrate a couple’s wedding anniversary, a bunch of friends get together at an old bungalow, and one amongst them gets murdered in the dead of the night. As any other murder-mystery, everyone is a suspect. But this not any other murder-mystery. Directed by Rajat Kapoor, known for his off-beat storytelling of the oddly specific, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa unfolds more like an immersive talkie than a stylistic genre piece. Named ironically after the aggressive murder victim, Sohrab Handa (Vinay Pathak), the film is a psychological study of a bully that he is. However, Handa is riddled with complexities, as the film also gives space for a softer side to him. “For me, people are not black and white. Everyone is a little grey. Nobody is just one thing. I tried to find a shaded human being in all this,” says the actor-filmmaker.

Sohrab Handa is played with assurance by Vinay Pathak, a long-time friend and collaborator of Kapoor, having worked with him in films and plays. Pathak says that he didn’t have to struggle much to embody Handa. “Rajat kept the character so cerebral and straight-forward that I didn’t have to bring my own imagination to understand his mind. You know what kind of a person he is just by reading his lines,” says Pathak.