Sarpanch Rupinder Singh Gandhi from Khanna (Punjab) was a prolific sportsman and a daring leader who sacrificed his own dreams for weak and downtrodden. His story is taking shape of a film and going through its post-production.Titled Rupinder Gandhi – The Gangster..?, the film has been written and directed by Tarn Mann. In this conversation, Tarn tells us how he took this decision of making such a film for a comedy-dominated film industry and how he overlook the demotivating and discouraging words of the people around him.Tarn has been staying in Canada from last 9 years and is connected to the world of film-making in some way or the other.
Born and brought up in Malerkotla (Punjab), Tarn had an interest in films since very beginning and was doing theatre since his school days.He said, “I have been around and worked for Mirza (2012) as a dialogue writer and assistant director and did a few English short films and music videos. I decided to make a visually stronger film which could be understood more with actions than the dialogues.”Tarn knew about Rupinder Gandhi through his friend circle here in Punjab and did a lot of research for this film. He believes that when stories come out of the real world, people think seriously about it and your project automatically gets publicity by word of mouth.He said, “Title of my film has a question mark because I am asking my audience whether my protagonist is right or wrong. I have taken all new faces that have a theatre background because I did not want my character to be dominated by the image of any known actor.”Punjabi cinema is full of comedy films yet Tarn believes that making a different film is still possible. He said, “Art cannot have any rules. It is free and will always be. Conditions make it a business.
So many people discouraged me to make such a film but I never stopped. Shooting the film wasn’t easy because we had to be very careful while portraying Rupinder on screen. After hearing much about him, I decided to pen down this story and gave it a shape of the script.”The drama-action film was shot in parts of Punjab and in Chandigarh. Made under the banner of DreamReality Movies, it has been produced by Daljit Singh Bola, Ravneet Chahal and Taranvir Singh. It is expected to be released around September-October this year.