Filmmaker Romilla Mukherjee tells Aditi Sharma how she directed her mother Ava, a familiar face on Indian ad films, to make a film about a grandma who can give Karamchand a complex

Every time Romilla Mukherjee gets the chance to talk about her debut film, her face lights up the way a new mom's does while chatting about her baby. The excitement is palpable even though she claims she so busy that the achievement of having created Detective Naani, a full-length feature, hasn't sunk in.

Grasping the nuances of being a propah director, she listens carefully as her publicist dishes out tips for the media screening. We caught up with the ad filmmaker-turned-film director, minutes before the first cut of the film arrived at her residence.

You have a mass media degree, but no formal training in filmmaking. And yet, here you are writing, directing and producing a film.
Yeah, I've always been a huge film buff. During the mass media course, my film professor would source films from the FTII archives, and I loved watching them. It sparked off something in me. I didn't train formally, but took up an internship with Imtiaz Dharker, a poetess who dabbles in corporate films. She is an artist with a tremendous sense of verbal and visual imagery. I didn't realise how much that would inspire me. Eventually, I broke away. Some things you learn only when you make your own film.