“Don’t judge the films and characters from a promo. It is a film of 140 minutes and, if you think, that there will be any credibility in the people who are seated here, have their choice before giving any opinion or creating a controversy. It has been happened with this film so far — the controversies by which the film is being surrounded , have cropped up even before it has been viewed,” said by Shahid Kapoor, one of the actors of Udta Punjab’s . He gave reference to the criticism that Alia Bhatt had to face for “not sounding like a Bihari immigrant” when the promo of the movie was released. Later on, Bhatt did the same when she said that the actor had pushed himself “far ahead” in the role of Tommy Singh, who is a rockstar with a habit of drug.
This movie is a story of four people whose lives are affected by the problem of drugs. In a press conference which was held in Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon, a day after when the Bombay High Court rejected all but just one of the cuts which Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) suggested, the caste of Udta Punjab came together to thank all those who gave their support to the film. It was also the time to announce that they would spen some more nights without sleeping to meet the deadline of reaching the theatres on June 17.
Together with the High court asking the Board to certify movies and do not make any atttempt to censor the movies, the proposition of revamping the Cinematograph Act, 1952 was raised more than once. Producer and Director , Mr Anurag Kashyap, one of the four partners at Phantom Films, who was very aggressive in his protest against the stand taken by the CBFC which was unreasonable said that the campaign for the Act’s “overhauling” had started for a while ago. As the film industry also joins the Udta team in their fight against CBFC, it gained a lot of momentum. “Under the same guidelines, we already had released Gangs of Wasseypur and Dev.D. Earlier, I had to face similar problems over my film Black Friday too. We were given a reason for their objections and it was a fair ground to fight. In this case, we were continuously hearing from others that the film has been banned and multiple cuts suggested. We did not receive any letter of recommendation of cuts from the Board (till we moved the court) to fight against it,” said Kashyap. He sounded hopeful that “the obsolete Act” would be amended vey soon and requested that “filmmakers should never be made soft targets”
