After winning multiple Filmfare awards for her directorial debut, it was a grand homecoming of sorts of Nandita Das in Kolkata which is not really her hometown. Nandita is an Oriya by parentage. But because of the number of films she has done in Bengali she’s often mistaken for a Bengali.

Sometimes even one director can be quite a handful on the sets of a movie. Imagine three of them in one small room trying to shoot a scene.

Unlike the directors mentioned alongside, Anurag Basu has had no previous experience in acting.
Onir explains why he asked Basu to act in his film, “I needed a certain look, a gravity and an authority in the personality.

That Kolkata-born Subodh Maskara had never watched a film shoot before showed up in his curiosity as he took a peek at wife Nandita Das shooting for Onir’s I Am Afia with Sanjay Suri and Purab Kohli in Kolkata

He turned down Anurag Kashyap’s offer to act in The Girl in Yellow Boots. Having made his acting debut in Kolkata for Onir’s I Am Afia, director Anurag Basu is planning to shoot his next with Ranbir Kapoor in north Bengal

Onir is on a hattrick! Having signed on Anurag Kashyap and Nandita Das for his I Am films, he has now convinced Anurag Basu to act too.

After tossing between Rani Mukherji, Bipasha Basu and Nandita Das for a lead role in I am Afia, Onir Nair has at last come to a decision. And the role goes to…Nandita Das!

Exit Kalki Koechlin. Enter Nandita Das. A change of story by director Onir has meant that the Shubho Mahurat actress turned Firaaq director, and not the Dev D debutante, would come to Calcutta to shoot for I Am Afia.

It’s easy to imagine a director driving around the city, scouting for locations, stopping by an old North Kolkata gali and being overwhelmed by the sheer drama of the place

Purab has just come on board the I am… series to be directed by Onir. He will be a part of the film Afia with Nandita, who incidentally has lost oodles of weight (not that she was ever plump) and is looking awesome.