Thar's locations were a character in themselves: Anil Kapoor

Netflix’s Thar (2022), starring Anil Kapoor, Harshvarrdhan Kapoor and Fatima Sana Shaikh, has made it to the streaming platform’s global Top 10 Non-English Films at number nine.

Directed by Raj Singh Chaudhary, the Western Noir was shot in remote Rajasthan. Set in the early 1980s, the film follows the mysterious Siddharth (Harshvarrdhan), an antique dealer as he arrives in a village on the heels of some violent killings.

Speaking about shooting for Thar, veteran actor Anil Kapoor, who plays Surekha Singh, a local cop, said, “The landscapes and locations in Thar were a character in themselves. Every location is absolutely exquisite. Right from the start, the locations were in sync with the mood and story of the film. We shot in a 300-year-old village, which was built by Aurangzeb. It is needless to say that our art director and production designer did a beautiful job designing and bringing the spirit of the film alive through the sets.”

Elaborating on how the locations added character to the film, Chaudhary said, “There are two things: one is creating a visual world, which is real, and the other, a cinematic world. Cinema and reality are something that you need to balance out, and the locations that we shot in were imperative in creating the world of Thar. My intention was to show Rajasthan in a way that nobody has ever shown before while also making sure that it resonates with the Western Noir genre.”

He continued, “The locations had to be gritty and hard-hitting, it had to be tough while being visually stunning, this is why I call it a ‘character’. We’ve put together each location keeping in mind various factors. For instance, even for a small shot of a jeep driving through a driveway, I travelled to a location 45 minutes away, just to make sure that we didn’t lose the character in any way.”

Thar, which was premiered on 6 May, also features artistes Satish Kaushik, Jitendra Joshi and Mukti Mohan.