Dibakar Banerjee: One possible name for 'Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2' was 'The Influence' | Exclusive

Fourteen years after Love Sex Aur Dhokha shook up a storm in filmdom Dibakar Banerjee is back with its spirit sequel which is out in theatres today Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 explores life in the times of social media and Dibakarrsquos objective gaze on it since he himself doesnrsquot participate in it In an exclusive interview with Middaycom the filmmaker tells us what he loves about social media and how he is hoping to lsquoshake things uprsquo with Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2Youre not on social media but you have made a film on the social media obsession of the current times How does that work I think that works best because if Im not on social media but if I am actually crawling and snooping on social media then Ill be kind of an objective viewer Im not participating in it but that objectivity kind of helps if youre not associated in terms of your own personal stakes If youre not personally influenced by it Then it becomes easier to be objective and make a film about it without the treatment becoming problematic where your own gaze is actually a problemWhat do you love and hate about social mediaI love everything I love the fact that people have the freedom to live many versions of their lives on social media People have the freedom to reinvent or invent new versions of themselves on social media And thats what LSD2 is about Its about our versions Its about our avatars Its about our multiple lives My film shows a janitor lowest of the low who is transgender whos working as a metro station loo cleaner But she also runs a love advisory YouTube channel called Pyar Ke Panchi So its about our lives our fantasy lives which are now becoming real because we are doing it in the virtual space I dont find anything problematic in it Its another sphere of lifeSo is everything that youre showing with respect to social media in LSD2 positive No no its very scary Im hoping to shake people up because I think when we are in a space where we are trying to escape our physical lives and then we are actually investing so much in our virtual lives then what happens is that the distance between our virtual and the real life becomes huge And since we still havent like Matrix gotten free of our physical lives there is a disconnect So thats what the film is about Its also about what fun situations emerge from this View this post on InstagramA post shared by EktaaRkapoor ektarkapoorWhat do you think about this whole influencer cultureYou know one possible name for LSD2 was The Influence Because it is about the influence Its about us being influenced Its about us influencing Its about how many followers do we have how many people do we follow So its about people chasing people and people running around in circles I love itWhat are the challenges of making fiction look like reality Well the first thing is that nobody wants to look at reality You might not have a hundred crore film on your hand so you have to make it on a very tight budget At the same time the reality that Im trying to show about LSD2 is the life of virtual reality So weve had to jump into sequences created by AI deep fake and animation and not shot by a camera Weve actually built a metaverse for our film Our climax is that all our characters are in the metaverse Theyre in the virtual avatars We created a game for our film because one of the protagonists is a gaming influencerWhy didnt you cast a trans person as Noor instead of a straight actor ParitoshWe had two transgender characters and we were very sure that we will have a transgender actor for Kulus role And we were looking at transgender actors for Noors role also but thats when we realized that if we have two transgender actors in one film and if its a theatrical release then its going to be a niche film I said that look Im not going to take a cisgender actress and make her act like a transgender its best to speak to men and figure out male actors and see how they feel about it Thats how Paritosh was cast as Noor But our biggest success has been that there are quite a few transgender women in our film acting as cisgender women which nobody will be able to tellWhy not release it on OTT It probably would have given you more libertieshellip Thats totally Ekta Kapoor producer Ekta wanted this film to be a theatrical She knew she was taking a huge risk Ekta knows that shes put her reputation her money on the line She has a very special place for LSD the franchise in her heart And when it came out in 2010 it set off new things for Ekta it gave a new direction I think Ekta is somebody whos always looking for a new direction and some kind of a provocation And she knew that Im the kind of filmmaker who will just jump at something like this But it was she who dangled the bait of LSD2 as a theatrical film It is she whos the most vulnerable in this scheme whos had to pull out rabbits after rabbits in terms of plans and schemes out of her hat to make this film financially viable