Ranabir and Dhritiman Das were drawn to filmmaking long before they could make sense of the world. Thanks to a neighbour who made ad films. Decades later, the older brother Ranabir is the co-producer and cinematographer of Payal Kapadia’s widely acclaimed film All We Imagine as Light. The singer-songwriter’s younger brother, Dhritiman, who is also known as Topshe, is the film’s composer.“The day it won the Grand Prix, it was my birthday,” Topshe, 32, fondly remembers sitting at his Kolkata home. Meanwhile, Ranabir has been touring the United States with Payal, attending the Golden Globes ceremony, where their film had two nominations, and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards ceremony, where it won the Best International Film Award. “Largely, it’s a good feeling, but it’s also quite daunting,” Ranabir, 35, says from New York, taking stock of the buzz around him. “With the path the film has taken, we suddenly have heavier voices, and that comes with a lot of responsibility.”The Das brothers grew up in the Gariahat area of South Kolkata. Drawn to filmmaking and music, they pursued it with the Mass Communication and Videography at St Xavier’s College in Park Street. Ranabir graduated and went to study cinematography at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, where he met Payal, his Direction course batchmate. Topshe joined their gang at about the same time.“It is easy enough for us to be honest with each other,” Topshe says about working with Payal. “There is no ego. She can reject my stuff if it doesn’t work with her. Actually, Payal and I align in the way we look at things, so she asked me to be more of myself with the score.” Making the minimalist and emotive piano-and-synth-based score has made Topshe rethink his approach to creating music. “The score was made in a very short time to meet the Cannes submission deadline,” Topshe says. “Now, I realise I have overthought and destroyed so many songs of mine in the past. I am realising that a song is essentially capturing one moment. The longer I put a song under construction, I impose other moments on it. So, now I am just letting the music flow through me instead of forcing multiple ideas on a single idea.”
Source link
