In India, we want to cover up issues: 'Yes Papa' director Saif Hasan on child sexual abuse

NEW DELHI: A lot of issues are not discussed as part of popular culture in India, says writer-director Saif Hyder Hasan, who is coming out with ''Yes Papa'', a film on sexual abuse of children at home.

Hasan, a playwright known for helming projects such as ''Ek Mulaqat'' and ''Gardish Mein Taare'', is making his film debut with ''Yes Papa'', featuring Geetika Tyagi, Ananth Mahadevan, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Hasan Zaidi and Nandita Puri.

The journey of the film, however, has not been easy, with rejections from actors to financiers, he said after a screening of the film in the national capital recently.

''Handling the subject of incestuous rape would have been a challenge at any given point of time, irrespective of the fact that it is my first film. ''No actor wanted to play the father's role (who rapes his daughter) for various reasons until Ananth Mahadevan came on board. The problem was nobody was even listening to the script, they would reject the role after just hearing the subject of the film,'' Hasan told PTI.

The challenges were not as a debut director but more for the subject, he said. ''In India, I feel we want to cover up issues. In the film, I am not blaming fathers. I am picking up a situation and it is covered in the newspapers, Pinky Virani has written a book on it, 'Bitter Chocolate' but as far as popular culture goes, we don't want to discuss these things,'' the director added.

''Yes Papa'' also struggled with finding financiers, he said, adding that ultimately his wife Sadia M Hasan had to produce the film.

''I kept going at it because I believed in the film. A lot of times you may or may not like a film but you cannot deny the subject which is being made. Finding financiers for these kinds of films is virtually impossible because they ask you 'Who is the star in the film?' ''They are least bothered about the story. All they want to know is which star is in the film. 'If you have a Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Ayushmann Khurana, I will finance the film', this is what they say. But that's okay. It is a journey which a lot of filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap and Hansal Mehta have gone through,'' Hasan added.

Shot in black-and-white except for a couple of scenes, ''Yes Papa'' has a run-time of less than 90 minutes and the filmmaker said the film tries to start a conversation with the audience.

''When we talk about commercial cinema, what we talk about right now is probably spectacles. Because spectacles are the only films which are working. So, in that sense it is not a commercial film, but it is a film which can communicate to people,'' he said.

''It all depends on how it is marketed and how we create a need for this kind of cinema. It is not an alternative cinema. It is a kind of film which basically talks about an issue in society. It doesn't just talk to itself, it has the capacity to converse with the audience,'' he added.

''Yes Papa'' releases on March 1.