National Award-winning filmmaker Ram Kamal Mukherjee is in a happy space, with his film Binodiini – Ekti Natir Upakhyan, a biopic on the first female theatre artist of Bengal, Binodini Dasi has seen box office success too apart from getting critical acclaim. It has been a long and arduous journey for the journalist-turned-director to bring out the film, which has been appreciated across India.

The Mumbai-based director has had to struggle for five ‘long’ years before his film saw light of the day.

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“It was a five-long-year journey for me and Rukmini Maitra (who plays Binodini) to make the film. Nobody wanted to put in money in a women-centric film, that too at such a high-cost budget. Without any box-office hero, it was a risk to find a producer, I was told. But I’m lucky to find Pratik Chakraborty of Pramod Films as producer and later Dev (Adhikari) too joined in. But before that I had to knock on the doors of every studio. Everyone told me it is not going to work. No producer was willing to burn his fingers,” says Ram Kamal.

The filmmaker’s conviction remained steadfast about the film’s potential and on his goal, undeterred by the impediments. He was proved right, ultimately. Not only did the film find its producers, the biopic was appreciated, from Mumbai to Tollywood to down south.

Ram Kamal disagreed with the naysayers and believes that Binodini is an icon. The reason he chose Binodini’s character for the biopic was that her journey had not been highlighted enough. “I wanted to tell the story of a woman, who is probably a renaissance woman. She was born in an era when men used to play women characters. She turned the table around and played Chaitanya Mahaprabhu on stage. She changed the social milieu, especially coming from a family, which resided in the redlight area of Calcutta. Men used to look down upon her for her background. But she was also blessed by the maverick Ramakrishna Paramhansa, who gave social recognition to stage actors. She played 90 characters in 80 plays and retired at the age of 26, an amazing achievement,” says the director, who was awarded a National Award for his film, Ek Duaa.

For Ram Kamal, there is no prefix or suffix to Binodini. “She is a star. Period!”

A milestone-moment for Binodiini – Ekti Natir Upakhyan came when the Star Theatre was renamed recently after the talismanic stage artist. “I’m grateful to chief minister Mamata Banerjee for the recognition. It has been a 141-year wait. She was wrongly denied that recognition and finally justice has been done, says Ram Kamal, adding, “Generally, we make movies out of history, but this film is creating history.”

Binodiini – Ekti Natir Upakhyan has been screened across India, in cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi and Bangalore. And the film has been appreciated by Tamil, Telegu, Hindi actors.

Ram Kamal loves telling real-life stories, strong stories, which inspire. “If you ask me, I like to tell stories from history. Having said that, I must add that biopic are difficult propositions. It takes a lot of time. You have to pick a character, do research on them, make a movie and then find a producer,” says the biographer of Hema Malini, Mithun Chakraborty and Sanjay Dutt.

The National Film Award winner loves coming to Kolkata, the city he was born in and educated. Rama Kamal now calls himself a Mumbaikar, which has been his karmbhomi (place of work) for the last 30 years. “My entire work has been in the Maximum City and has also fetched me a National Award for Ek Duaa. I want to create more content in Hindi as it will give me a national reach. My parents are herein Kolkata. I’m rooted to Kolkata and am a very proud Bengali. That is why my first feature film is in my mother tongue,” says the former journalist.

Ram Kamal has announced making Draupadi, also starring Rukmini Maitra, though his next Bengali release will be Lakshmikantapur Local, of which first part is complete. It starts Rituparna Sengupta, Paoli Dam, Kaushik Ganguly, Chandrayi Ghosh and Sangeeta Sinha. The film is based on real-life but fictionalised. “It is in complete variance to Binodiini and Draupadi, a contemporary take on city life. It is a story of Kolkata from three maids’ point of view. They travel from Lakshmikantapur to work for three different families. I’ve tried to show different emotions through their tales,” says Ram Kamal, who thinks his perspective on Kolkata is different from what other directors from Tollywood or Bollywood have. “Since I have been staying outside the state now, I look at the city from a different perspective. That’s what you see in Lakshmikantapur Local, an outsider’s point of view. Unless you can present different viewpoints, there is no excitement,” says Ram Kamal. Someone, who loves telling stories of strong characters, has explored stories of common man in the film, just as he did in his previous films Rickshawala, Season’s Greetings, Cakewalk.

The filmmaker feels films are a director’s medium, and if you can get performances out of actors, you are a good director. He believes in Oscar winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s words “there is nothing as a good or bad actor, there is always a good or bad director.”