Nora and Subrat at The Park. Picture: Anindya Shankar Ray

The visual of a tiger catching hold of a man stayed on with Kamal Sadanah. It was from there that the man who made his Bolly acting debut opposite Kajol in Bekhudi and then starred in some forgettable’90s films like Rang and Hum Sab Chor Hai decided to make his directorial debut with a film that centred on the tigers of the Sunderbans. “Kamal wanted to make a film that his children would love. Kamal and his friend Abis Rizvi, who has produced Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans, did a VFX course before they started on the film,” said Calcutta actor Subrat Dutta. The man with films like Talaash and Rakht Charitra on his CV, plays a poacher called Bheera in Roar, which releases this Friday.

“It is the fictional story of a tigress and her cub, told to a child. The film will appeal to children because it has the theme of good versus evil,” said Subrat, who, along with co-star Nora Fatehi, was in Calcutta this week to promote Roar. “I am playing an Indian girl who is a commando. Her name is CJ, which stands for Crazy Jenny. In the film, I look very sexy but my nature is like that of a boy. I am the glam factor in the film,” said the part-Moroccan, part-Indian model who grew up in Canada.

Last year, the cast and crew of Roar plonked themselves in the Sunderbans for 35 days to shoot the film. “We lived in three ships. There were two ships to get food and water for the 180-strong crew. There were wild animals all around us. There were cub marks and snakes hissing around all the time,” recalled Subrat.

The Roar cast and crew didn’t have face-to-face encounters with tigers, but they saw vivid paw and tail marks. “The guards there would tell us which paw mark is old and which is new. No local people lived there. There were only a few foreigners shooting documentaries. I have been to Sunderbans before but what I experienced while shooting was completely different,” said Subrat.

Screened at the Film Mart section at Cannes this year, a host of noteworthy names have worked on Roar — Michael Watson, the operating cameraman of Brad Pitt’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, worked on the film’s cinematography with a Helicam used in the Bond film Skyfall. Oscar winner Resul Pookutty is the film’s sound designer.

Nora, who learnt to speak Hindi while shooting the film, had to train hard to play a commando. “Our action commando training involved five guys and one girl. The guys were muscular and big, but I managed to keep up with the boys,” said the leggy stunner who admires Priyanka Chopra and has grown up watching Shah Rukh Khan films like Devdas and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

Post-Roar, Subrat has two releases — Akshay Kumar’s Shaukeens and Tevar, co-starring Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha. “In Shaukeens, I have done comedy for the first time. I play a Bengali director who teaches Akshay Kumar, who plays himself, how to act, while in Tevar I play a grey character,” he signed off.