Being Cyrus, a psychological thriller by debutant film maker Homi Adajania will open in theatres this Friday. The cast of the film may not be star laden but it sure has some fine actors – Naseeruddin Shah, Dimple Kapadia, Saif Ali Khan and Boman Irani
Set in the Parsi milieu the film is in English the preferred language of community. This is the first English language film for Saif who admitted to Times of India that doing a film in English did not turn out to be as easy as he had contemplated. It took him some time to get the hang of it.
Speaking about the story line Saif said, “Subjects like those in Being Cyrus have never been tried in Indian cinema. It’s an experiment and hopefully the audiences will like it. I always feel cinema should be slightly disturbing or affect you in some way and make you think, which Being Cyrus certainly does.”
Homi Adajania has consciously bucked the Bollywood stereotype of portraying Parsis as comic characters in this film.
Speaking about how Parsis are generally mocked in Hindi cinema for their dress and style of speaking, Scriptwriter, Sooni Taraporewala, told CNN-IBN, “One of the strengths of the Parsi community as I see it is that we have always been able to laugh at ourselves, and we shrug it off and thank god we don’t go around burning buildings and killing people because of such portrayals.”
Admitting that such portrayals can be hurtful she continued, “I think it is because we are a minority and we are so insignificant in terms of numbers that there is a lot of ignorance about Parsis.”