Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, starring Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, has achieved a cult status that continues to fancy audiences to this day. However, actor Nawazuddin has now admitted that he was initially left perplexed and unimpressed by the first cut of the movie. Also read: Is Gangs of Wasseypur 3 in the making? Anurag Kashyap breaks silence
The actor spoke about the film on a podcast by ANI. He added that he was won over by the film after its screening at the Cannes Film Festival.
Blast from the past
In the podcast, he was asked if he knew that they were onto something while they were working on the film. He replied, “Not at all. You can never tell while you’re working on a film. In fact, I didn’t know even after we’d finished it. When I watched the first cut, I thought, ‘Yeh kya bana diya hai yaar (What in the world has he made)’. But when I watched the final film at Cannes, after it had been refined, that’s when I realised why Anurag is Anurag.”
“He’s a genius man. He changed the face of Indian cinema, and the entire world took notice. He might not be appreciated in his own country, but I’m sorry, the world knows what he has done,” he added.
Gangs of Wasseypur premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight category at the 2012 edition of Cannes. Anurag went back to the film festival in 2016 film, Raman Raghav 2.0, which also played in the Directors’ Fortnight category, and in 2023, with Kennedy, which premiered in the Midnight Screenings category.
About the franchise
Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) is a gangster action crime film produced and directed by Anurag Kashyap. Apart from Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the film also stars Manoj Bajpayee, Pankaj Tripathi, Richa Chadda, Huma Qureshi and Tigmanshu Dhulia.
The two-film Gangs of Wasseypur series narrated the saga of a coal mafia family in the town of Wasseypur in Dhanbad district of Jharkhand. Both films were loved by the masses for their drama and rawness, and acclaimed by the classes for cinematic aesthetics. The two films were box-office hits. It released on August 30.
