Imtiaz Ali reveals details of his next film; says it won't be travel-o

It's while travelling that all of Imtiaz Ali's
characters undergo a life-altering
experience but the director says his next
won't involve travel, which would be a
change for him. Right from his debut, Socha
Na Tha, where Viren and Aditi travel to Goa
and fall in love, to his last, where Harry and
Sejal realise they are meant to be together
while searching for a ring in Europe,
journeys have been an integral part of
Imtiaz's films.
His next reunites him with his Jab We Met
actor, Shahid Kapoor and the director is
tight lipped about the project. In an
interview with PTI, Imtiaz says, "The film is a
human story. It's in one place. If I can tell
you one thing, it would be that it is not a
travel-oriented film, which is a good thing
for me, it will be different for me." Imtiaz
says while he did discuss the film with
Shahid, nothing is official yet.
"It's not really decided (when the movie
goes on floors), even the casting isn't
decided yet. Shahid and I have met and
spoken about it but it's not as if we have
decided and signed anything at all. There's
nothing officially planned about it," he says.
For Imtiaz, the decision to base his films in a
certain city comes very much at the scripting
stage. His breakthrough Jab We Met, for
instance, could've been based in Rajasthan
too, but the director says the reason to shift
it to Punjab was natural. "With me, it has
always been at an early stage where I figure
out a city, state or a country I'd like story in.
While I was writing 'Jab We Met' where
there was a girl on the train I kept asking
questions to myself, that she's speaking in a
certain way and is going to a certain
location, which was from Mumbai to Delhi.
"So it had to be somewhere over there. It
could've been Rajasthan, which I was earlier
thinking. But the way she spoke, I felt she's
a Punjabi girl. That's why it went to Punjab."
Just as much his characters, the cities in the
backdrop form an important part of Imtiaz's
films be it Ved and Tara bonding in Corsica
in Tamasha or Rockstar's Jordan who spirals
down on the path of self destruction post
reuniting with Heer in Prague. "For Corsica
or Prague, they stayed while I was writing
the initial screenplay of these films. I had
neither been to Prague nor had I gone to
Corsica or Bhatinda when I wrote about
them but I had an impression of these
places, largely from the pictures I had seen
or from what people might've told him.
"Or historical details, whether the bombings
had flattened Prague or not it wasn't flat
earlier and so I went. When I go to these
cities, I take them in my script as well and
work the screenplay around them," he adds.
At the recently concluded FICCI Frames,
Imtiaz had mentioned a script which he had
written about two countries. When asked
what the film is about, the 46-year-old
director says, "There is something about
displacement there. It is about two cultures,
about the obvious differences between
them but also similarities. It's a character
which crossed from one to the other. So I
felt India and China could be interesting."
While it's "another story" why the movie
couldn't materialise yet, Imtiaz says his
scripts which do not turn into films stay
with him, and become a "part of me".
"Sometimes, they merge into other stories,
become a part of several films, on their own.
That also happens. But they never leave," he
adds.

http://www.dnaindia.com/bollywood/report-imtiaz-ali-reveals-details-of-his-next-film-says-it-won-t-be-travel-oriented-2592881.