Halls are shutting down, shooting stalled and no production house wants to release films. How the future of Bengali cinema looks like now? Actor-director Parambrata Chattopadhyay who recently started a COVID relief centre with Riddhi Sen, Anupam Roy and others feels it will take time to get back into normalcy. He hopes in five-six months situation will improve.

“Even films like Sooryavanshi are stalled. Salman Khan released his film on the OTT platform. Bollywood’s only advantage is that they get reasonably fair prices from the major OTT platforms. We don’t have that luxury. Without a bit of theatrical release, we cannot recover the cost. So we will have to wait. After this second wave, I doubt if the audience will immediately be confident about going back to theatres even if they reopen in a month or so. Things will take time - maybe in another five to six months, things will be better. We need not cry over how everything's all over. We have seen difficult times. There was a 100-day-long strike in ’70s. We will survive this also,” shares Parambrata during an exclusive chat.

His dream project ‘Abhijaan’, the Soumitra Chattopadhyay biopic, has also been stalled. “We are working hard to finish the film because there is a festival invite. We have completed the background score and the last phase of audio is happening,” adds Parambrata.

Meanwhile, a major talking point in our COVID fight has been the participation of youngsters. In Bengal especially, the youth has been powering initiatives for months now. Many of them are even working with Parambrata as well and he feels proud to see them working tirelessly on the ground.

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