The Saints of Sin has been a three-year journey with no clear destination in mind.
The seed of the project came from Swati Bhattacharya, a friend and Creative Director in an Agency. And, together we started this journey, exploring the lives and experiences of Seven and a Half Bengali women from Nairobi, New York, New Delhi and Bombay.
I started shooting the film myself, purely because I wanted the sessions to be intimate, But later... I started enjoying the process and I ended up shooting almost the entire film myself.
After two years of shooting, when we put together our first cut, I realized the film had something missing... another dimension... which was Music.
So, I started my search for the correct music for the film... songs for each of the chapters. I came across a beautiful song sung by Anusheh Anadil, a poet and singer from Dhaka. Its a song about the ‘multiplicity of characters in one person’. This worked perfectly as the theme song of the film and Anusheh agreed to sing for the project.
Along with her, I also connected with Armeen Musa, Aanon and Nashid Kamal... some of the finest poets, singers and performers in Bangladesh, who graciously agreed to sing for the film. We shot and recorded all the songs in Dhaka.
These eight songs helped us give the final form to the film. In places they amplified the thought ... and in places they added a new subtext. The Saints of Sin, for me has been more of a journey than just making a film. It has been my journey to explore ways of listening, absorbing and eventually storytelling.