Bollywood filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee is all set for Netflix anthology film Ghost Stories where he has directed one of the four segments. The director, who has made films like Khosla Ka Ghosla, Shanghai, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, is venturing into the space of horror and fear for the first time.
He recently spoke on the subject of horror and fear during an interview with news agency IANS. He said, “Fear is an important emotion and without it we will die. Fear is an instinct that has brought evolution, and ensures us in surviving. Now, we are much more secure than the earlier ages of civilisation. Far less people die than what used to happen a million years ago.”
He further added, “The more we become civilised, we realise that our drive for fear needs to be refuelled. That is why we enjoy the ghost stories of our grandparents. Now that survival is not as difficult as it was before, we have new kinds of fear that has to do with climate, nature, geography and socio-politics. I am trying to update the fear ‘menu’ of our mind through the film.”
The other three segments in the film are directed by Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar. It marks the third collaboration of the four directors who previously made Bombay Talkies in 2013 and Lust Stories in 2018. The latter received a nomination for International Emmy Award for Best TV Movie or Miniseries
Produced by RSVP Movies and Flying Unicorn Entertainment, Ghost Stories features an ensemble cast which includes Surekha Sikri, Avinash Tiwary, Mrunal Thakur, Janhvi Kapoor, Vijay Varma, Sobhita Dhulipala, Gulshan Devaiah and others.
It will premiere on 1 January 2020 on Netflix.