Vikrant Massey is set to star in his first international project, White, where he plays the role of spiritual leader Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar. While his look from the film hasn’t been released yet, the director of the film Montoo Bassi, tells us the process that the actor underwent to get into the part.
Sharing his experience of working with Vikrant Massey, Montoo Bassi says, “It was fantastic, it was very easy to work with him and he is supremely talented. He’s been known for playing meaningful characters on screen and this is one of those. It was a challenging thing but he was completely up to it and gave it his 100% to it. When it comes to the makeover and his transformation, he gave five hours of prosthetics and then 12 hours of shoot daily, and he was very accommodative and comfortable with that.”
Montoo asserts that White is not a biopic on Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar but a telling of one of the longest internal conflicts in the world, where he played the peacemaker. “It is a global political thriller about one of the longest internal conflicts in the world where about 5 million people have been affected and around 250000 people have lost their lives in the last 52 years. A lot of residents of Colombia have been trying to figure out a solution to this conflict. And here comes an Indian spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and gets involved in the peace process of the country and manages to sit with the rebel leaders and convince them,” he shares.
The director shares that the film features a global cast from different countries across the globe. “We shot in Latin America and I was fortunate to get the best talent from Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, France, Argentina and India. It was a great experience. Since the story happens to be in Colombia, we had to work with the Colombian crew and we partnered with one of the biggest production houses over there,” he says, adding, “The film is in Spanish and English, with the Spanish characters talking in their language. Me being an Indian, I had to prepare a lot to understand Spanish to be able to direct actors in their own language. There was a lot of preparation involved in how to overcome the language barrier. I did not want it to be like an outsider’s view. It took almost five to six years for this film to be made because of that. We now plan to release it in May this year.”
