Satabdi Roy

Mamata Banerjee

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

Mamata Banerjee may be an Opposition leader in real life but a Trinamul-dominated advisory panel on censorship won’t allow a reel-life version. She is free to talk about “conspiracies” against her in public but a film by an aide cannot broach the subject.

Satabdi Roy, actor-turned-MP-turned-director, has learnt a few lessons the hard way since her maiden directorial venture Paribartan — with Rs 1.5-crore riding on her tale of Maya Mukherjee, a character inspired by Mamata — ran into rough weather for depicting the chief minister-in-waiting as an Opposition leader whose life was under threat from the ruling party.

Paribartan (change) was scheduled to release across Bengal on Friday but an advisory panel of the regional office of the Central Board of Film Certification — including Trinamul MLA Arup Biswas, Mamata’s aide Dola Sen and civic body chairman Sacchidananda Bandopadhyay — refused to clear the film without “much-needed alterations”.

“The film is absolutely fine as far as the story line is concerned. It captures well how a fighter like Mamata Banerjee has emerged from Bengal. However, the film deals with Didi as an Opposition leader. We have objected to it and urged the censor board not to allow this word, besides a few more things,’’ said a Trinamul MLA dealing with the controversy.

The Trinamul leader did not spell out whether the panel’s objection to Maya’s portrayal as an “Opposition leader” originated at 30B Harish Chatterjee Street, Mamata’s residence.

Satabdi, an MP from Birbhum, plays Mamata’s character in the film, which she has described as a commercial film with a love story set against the backdrop of political violence.

“I haven’t received the censor certificate. The board has objected to parts of my film,” Satabdi told Metro, ruing the delay in the release of the film and its possible impact on the producers.

Though numbers are not available, controversies over censor certificate tend to help the publicity of films in India.

With a title like Paribartan, inspired by Mamata’s call for change, the film’s curiosity quotient was already high. The controversy may have now added to the film’s chances of success, in which case Satabdi could well be thanking her box-office stars for the controversy.

On the flip side, it is likely to cast a shadow on the actress-turned-director’s fledgling political career. A member of the advisory panel said sections of the film didn’t go down well with the party as well as Mamata.

“Parts of the film are unwarranted… There are scenes showing the chief minister hatching a conspiracy to kill the Opposition leader,” said the panel member.

That the chief minister himself — small time jatra actor Tridib Ghosh’s character does bear a resemblance to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee — has been shown hatching the conspiracy is also a sore point.

“There are films dealing with violence that show how chief ministers and Opposition leaders plot each other’s downfall…. But this film has been directed by a party MP and she needed to show restraint. There was no need to show a conspiracy to kill a character modelled on Didi,’’ said an aide.

Trinamul leaders also want Satabdi to put the disclaimer — “All characters are fictional and that resemblance to anybody is co-incidental” — at the start of the film. “I have decided to comply with the cuts. That’s why I submitted an edited version of the DVD to the censor board today. Once the board clears the film, I will organise edited negatives from Hyderabad. All this will take around a month,” said Satabdi, hopeful of a February release.