Director: Ram Madhvani
Producer: Shift Focus (Ram Madhvani and Sumantra Ghosal)
Actors: Boman Irani, Maia Katrak, Anahita Uberoi
Scriptwriters: Maia Katrak, Boman Irani, Sanjay Sipahimalani, Ram Madhvani
Music: Ram Sampath
Cinematographer: Sumantra Ghosal

  
   
Ram Madhvani

You would probably expect Ram's debut film to be a thriller. Full of visual language, relevant use of technique, edible art direction and design but Ram consciously decided to stay far away from all of this. The last thing he wanted was for the audience to say that it's a film made by an ad-film maker.
Instead Ram decided to concentrate on the 'landscape of the human face'. His list of fodder to the team was:

  1. The structure of:
    • The Thumri, wherein one line is sung over and over again in a multiplicity of moods and emotions.
    • 'Copenhagen' by Michael Frayn.
  2. The use of language by Mike Leigh, Philip Roth's 'Deception' and Jeanette Winterson's 'Written on the Body'.
  3. The emotional depth of Raymond Carver and Mike Leigh.
  4. The characters from... our lives.
The other wish list was to make a film wherein the English sounded like we speak it rather than the formal deliberate use of it in Indian English theatre and films.
In future films, Ram will continue to speak of the 'sacred ordinariness' of normal lives, dealing with day to day events, yet in an interesting, un-boring, edge-of-the-seat manner. Where you can smell the characters, observe them in an unobserved manner as they go through the 'sad comicality' of their everyday lives.
 
Sumantra Ghosal
Sumantra Ghosal started taking photographs (principally of his two dogs) at a very early age. After several years of this, when both of them died, he decided to explore a wider range of subjects. This led him to advertising where he was pleasantly surprised to find immediate acceptance as a director. He has continued to work in the profession for twenty years and has won several national and international awards (but none of them as a cameraman).
When his partner, Ram Madhvani decided to make his debut feature, Sumantra was asked whether he would care to capitalise on his early experiences as a photographer. Not realizing that this meant shooting very, very long takes with practically no lights or rehearsals, he agreed. The results can be seen in "Let's Talk", Sumantra's first film as a cinematographer.
 
Boman Irani
A photographer by profession, Boman started his theatre with a cameo role in Alyque Padamsee's "Roshni". In Raell Padamsee's "Family ties" he acted as the 75-year-old Dhunjisha Batliwalla in Rahul Da Cunha's "I'm not Bajirao". The play is in it's 6th year and has been performed all over India and abroad. He lost 23 kgs to play the Mahatma in Feroz Khan's 'Mahatma vs Gandhi'. The play did 22 shows in South Africa to packed houses and was voted Play of the Year by the South African press. The play has performed in London, the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore and all over India. It also performed to a capacity crowd at the Stanford University.
Boman has performed the lead role in Ram Madhvani's feature film 'Let's talk'. "Let's talk" will premiere at the Locarno film festival this year. He has done a cameo in Rahul Bose's 'Everybody Says I'm Fine'. Over a 100 TV commercials old, he has featured in ads of Fanta, Krackjack, Tata Indica and many more.
He finally made his debut as a director a few months ago. He is on the panel of directors with a leading production house 'Highlight Films'. He has completed 6 commercials and his currently concentrating on a new career.
 
Maia Katrak
Named after the Greek goddess of fertility by her poet father and actress mother, Maia Katrak has sixteen years in the advertising business and runs her own creative shop, The Republic, in Mumbai. She also has to her credit a volume of published verse: Between Two Worlds. In her teens, Maia attended a Summer Course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, training that somehow survived a decade to stand her in good stead for her debut performance in 'Let's Talk'. Maia is 35 years old and single. Despite her name, she has no children.
 
Anahita Uberoi
Anahita Uberoi is an actress and director who has worked extensively in New
York, Germany and Mumbai. She has, to date, worked on 28 productions in a
span of 12 years.
She studied acting, directing, dance and singing at the Herbert Bergh Studio in New York. While the bulk of her work is in the theatre, she has recently experimented with film as a medium.
 
Ram Sampath
Ram Sampath is a composer, producer and musician, working mainly in the Mumbai advertising circuit. He has also helped promote local bands and talent.
 
Sanjay Sipahimalani
Sanjay Sipahimalani works in an advertising agency in Mumbai. He has attended the graduate creative writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, New York, and his short story, "Surface Tension' (based on 'Let's Talk') has appeared in the magazines Inscape and Upstairs at Duroc.
 
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