Shillong: Film director Pradip Kurbah has said Khasi films should not be confined to the state but must go beyond Meghalaya for the industry to grow.

"We should not just depend on our state for inspiration and promotion. We should start making films beyond Meghalaya," Kurbah told reporters while announcing the completion of the shooting of Khasi feature film Iewduh.

The film, produced by Shankar Lall Goenka and directed by Pradip Kurbah, centres around the kind of relationships people in a marketplace and those living in the area share.

"Taking the film outside the state is very important. I did take my last film Onaatah to many places and luckily it is now on Netflix. We expect to do the same with Iewduh. Rather than focusing more on our state, we should look beyond," Kurbah added.

The film will be sent to film festivals outside the state and will be released later.

Kurbah said the audience is still hesitant to watch Khasi films. "Until the audience comes forward, the growth of Khasi cinema will take time."

Kurbah said Iewduh (a famous market in Shillong) portrays the everyday lives of people who are heroes in some way or the other.

"The basic idea of making this film is that it talks about different kinds of human relationships. I have focused more on the relationships that people share inside the market place," the director said.

"It is not a documentary, Iewduh itself is a character in this film," he added.

Line producer Tyrel R. Lyngdoh said, "Besides the relationship, we look at Iewduh as a space which has so much life in it that we often neglect or do not see. The film captures this essence."

The protagonist is a person who collects money outside a public toilet, played by Albert Mawrie.

The other actors are Richard Kharpuri, Enshon Lamare, Lapynhun Sun, Anvil Laloo, Jeetesh Sharma, Denver Pariat, Elmer War, Khambor Nongneng, Lapdiang Syiem, Saju Ahmed, Dhruba Kalita and Rupam Barua.

The shooting took 23 days to complete but the pre-production was around three months.

The actors' mentor, Lapdiang Syiem, said, "We have to make sure that these characters were very comfortable with their body language. They have to get used to the space of what Iewduh actually is. Training the actors was a learning process for me. We tried to make everything as natural as possible."