The shoot of Ram Kamal Mukherjee's upcoming Hindi short film Broken Frame, starring Ritabhari Chakraborty and Rohit Bose Roy, has wrapped up in Kolkata. Based on the first short story from his collection Long Island Ice Tea, Broken Frame is Mukherjee’s fourth film after Season’s Greetings (2020), Rickshawala (2021) and Cakewalk (2021).
Coincidentally, Broken Frame is also Mukherjee’s fourth consecutive film to be shot in Kolkata. “Trust me, this was not pre-planned," said the director. “It just happened that all my films so far have been based in Kolkata. Maybe because of my roots and comfort zone. Though shooting in Kolkata is not an easy task with so many parameters forcefully thrown upon us by the management.”
Broken Frame deals with the journey of a married couple that is planning to celebrate their wedding anniversary. However, due to unforeseen events, something goes terribly wrong.
Explaining why he was adapting this particular story, Mukherjee said readers tended to connect with it instantly. "I had to make a few cosmetic changes for the screen. I always wanted to tell these stories with different directors on screen, but somehow it didn't happen,” he said.
Speaking of working with his lead actor, Mukherjee said, “I find Rohit a fantastic actor. He was well prepared with his character and dialogues. He is one of those rare actors who gets deep into the character and stays involved till the last day of the shoot. I am glad that we got to work together as a team. Rohit is like an elder brother who helped in improvising shots with his valuable inputs.”
Roy, who called the director a “taskmaster”, said, "I have known Ram Kamal since his early days in journalism. Suddenly I noticed that he had turned into a filmmaker and I happened to watch his film Cakewalk with Esha Deol and Season's Greetings with Celina Jaitly. That's when I wrote to him, saying that I would love to work with him someday. And after a couple of months, he approached me with this film, with a fantastic subject.”
Mukherjee approached Chakraborty after he saw her commendable performance opposite Anurag Kashyap in Fool For Love (2018) and in Aritra Mukherjee’s Brahma Janen Gopon Kommoti (2020). “She is an extremely talented actor. During the script narration she had jotted down points which she wanted to discuss and once we cleared her doubts she was fully into the character,” said the filmmaker.
The screenplay of the film has been written by Sameer Satija while Shailendra Kumar has composed the music. Echoing the director’s comments, producer Aritra Das said, “Shooting in Kolkata was not easy, though we shot much before the Bengal election and second wave. The subject required a certain grandeur and look which we could achieve because of our teamwork. Thankfully, the film was based mostly indoors so we took enough precautions for our cast and crew members.”
Along with Das, the film has been co-produced by Sarbani Mukherjee and Gaurav Daga.