After his successful stint as an actor, Sandeep Baswana has made his directorial debut with the movie Haryana. The actor and director worked on the project throughout the lockdown and is relieved that his first movie is being appreciated by the audience. Sandeep also revealed that for his first project as a director, he got immense support from his friends from the industry, in fact, support from an actor like Alia Bhatt was a pleasant surprise to him and his team. Sandeep shares, “When I wrote the film, I just wrote that one of the characters in the movie falls in love with Alia Bhatt. I didn’t think much about it then or while we were shooting the movie. It was in the later stages we realised that we need some footage from Alia Bhatt for the movie and all the sources we approached were quoting a huge amount and asked us if we had Alia Bhatt’s permission to use her footage in the movie. We were sort of stuck. It was then that a friend suggested to me that why don’t we write to Alia directly. I didn’t take the suggestion seriously as I thought it will be odd to write to her as I had never interacted with her in the past. One night Ashlesha (Savant; who has also acted in the movie Haryana) and I were discussing this and as a last resort we thought let’s write to Alia. Ashlesha sent her a text introducing us and the film and shared that we needed some footage from her. In the morning, we were pleasantly surprised to see that Alia had responded saying that no film is big or small and as actors we all should support and stand with each other and she will help us with anything possible from her end. She connected us to her manager and since then Alia and her team have been helpful in providing us footage, pictures etc.”
The actor and director shares that he feels extremely lucky to have found such support from the industry for his maiden project. “I think it is very encouraging and I am full of gratitude for the kind of support that Alia extended to us and that really helped us in completing the film on time,” says Sandeep.
