subject: Dibakar Banerjee - Bollywood Director [print this page] Dibakar Banerjee was born in 1969 in Delhi and was brought up there. He studied at Bal Bharati Public School at Delhi. He was from a basic middle class family. He joined the National Institute of Design (NID) at Ahmedabad to study visual communications and graphic design.
He left the institute two and a half years later and returned to Delhi. Seven months later, he worked as a trainee under corporate audio visual filmmaker Sam Mathews. Dibakar plunged into copy writing, as a career goal, with Shems Combit and then TBWA Anthem.
Later he worked under Pradeep Sarkaar (director of Parineeta ) at the advertising agency, Contract Advertising in Delhi. Pradeep, then, was the creative director at Contract Advertising. In the year 1997, he left Contract Advertising to launch his own company, Watermark, with two of his friends who had studied at NID. Watermark was into the making of ad films and promos.
Savita Raj Hiremath was starting a feature film production house (Tandav Films) and wanted Jaideep Sahni (writer of Company , Bunty Aur Babli ) to be the creative head of the first movie. Jaideep was also a colleague of Dibakar at Contract Advertising in Delhi.
Savita wanted to make a film based in Delhi along with the characters, settings and situations typical of the city. Jaideep been the creative head of the film, the earliest thing he did was to introduce her to Dibakar. Dibakar, who was born and brought up in Delhi, knew the city in and out.
Jaideep had worked with him many years in advertising and had always felt that he could make a great film one day.
Dibakar knew the middle class world very well, having grown up in it and he was very passionate about portraying it on the big screen. And thus, Dibakar got himself on board.
KHOSLA KA GHOSLA got released in the year 2006, after two years in the making. The film was received positively by critics. It won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. The film has earned a cult following. And Dibakar came under the spotlight.
In the year 2008, he co wrote and directed Oye lucky! Lucky oye! , also set in his hometown Delhi, starring Abhay Deol and Paresh Rawal. The film, infused with satire and realism, was about a lovable thief and his adventures in the city.
The film won three Filmfare Awards. The film was a profitable venture aided with positive reviews. It won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film. In 2010, Ekta Kapoor (Balaji Telefilms Ltd.) presented Dibakar Banarjee Love Sex Aur Dhokha to the Indian audience.
Digitally shot with a hand held camera, it was the first digital feature film in Indian Cinema. Starring newcomers, the film was inspired from real life incidents involving voyeurism about honor killings, MMS scandals and sting operations.
The film was met with strong positive reviews and was termed by many to be a very courageous and trend setting film in the new era. Dibakar got the idea for the film when he was at a store in Delhi where a security camera was being installed and he observed that people, who were around, started behaving differently. He realized that when people were on camera they behaved differently.
Dibakar Banerjee is married to Richa Puranesh, an advertising professional. They currently reside in Parel, Mumbai.
He, now, continues to make ad films under his new banner, Freshwater Films.
