#dushman

20 Years of #Dushman. (29/05/1998)

Dushman is a 1998 Psychological thriller film starring Sanjay Dutt, #Kajol and Ashutosh Rana in lead roles. The film is directed by Tanuja Chandra and produced by Mukesh Bhatt and Pooja Bhatt. The film was well received by critics as well as at the box office and was the seventh highest grossing Hindi film of 1998, winning lead actress Kajol, who was seen in the double role of twin sisters along with Ashutosh Rana quite a few awards, at a number of award ceremonies that year.

The film is a remake of Hollywood film Eye for an Eye.

In the second half of Dushman, I put into it a love story that didn’t really belong there. Writing is the backbone of any film, the story idea, the screenplay–but basically the story. You know you can have bad production values, you can have bad acting, you can have bad everything--but if your story works, your movie works.  

Naturally, my personality will pour into the kind of story that I’m telling, you know? The female character will be someone who is urban, who is modern, but at the same time someone who has her own sort of fears, and her own hopes and dreams and at the same time things that trouble her–at the same time [has] her helplessness. Because it’s not as if a woman is you know, a wonder woman. It’s not true that she doesn’t have fears and hopes and helplessness. At the same time she has passion, she is intense. And she has a very definite want.

-- A transcribed excerpt from an interview with director and screenwriter Tanuja Chandra on her first feature film Dushman in the PBST documentary When Women Call the Shots (2001) by Charu Gargi.