After fest run, Aditya Kriplani struggles to secure a release for his film

Filmmaker Aditya Kriplani’s Not Today, which tackles subject of suicide and mental health, has travelled to different film festivals and won awards, but the journey of its release is turning out to be an arduous one.

He reveals that with OTT getting dependent on stars, independent filmmakers have to pay the price of star-led culture.

“(Securing a release for the film) is challenging because for the last few years, (due to the pandemic too), OTT platforms have all become very star driven. And we don’t have enough stars in our films. So, it is very very challenging,and I can only hope for things to get better in the next six to nine months,” Kriplani tells us.

The film, which stars Harsh Chhaya and Rucha Inamdar, has went to festivals across the world including UK Asian Film Festival, Indian Film Festival of Stuttgart and Ottawa Indian Film festival. And recently, the film won Best Film award at the Asian Competition and Fipresci International Critics Award at the Bengaluru International Film Festival.

“Right now, the streaming world is overcrowded with star backed projects but this all will change again once theatres start making money, and then more films will go back to theatres, and start making money. Old days will be back when OTT was more content driven and less star,” he says.

Opening up about the importance of going to different festivals with the film, the director says, “If your film is competing with another really big project, only then your film starts getting noticed more because people start comparing”.

“Going to different film festivals has definitely taught me that the budget of a film doesn’t matter. Our film is one seventh of the budget of all the other films that we have competed with, yet we ended up getting recognized in such a beautiful manner. It teaches you that it is about the performances,” he concludes.