00:00I wanted to make this film since I was a teenager.
00:02I really needed this play at the moment that I experienced it
00:05because Hamlet was feeling the way that I was.
00:08Lovely to meet you guys.
00:09Congratulations.
00:10Thank you for bringing us this great modern adaptation
00:14with a South Asian twist as well
00:17because I've never seen that before, I don't think, in all my years.
00:21Was that quite special to be able to do that?
00:24It just started from a very personal place.
00:26If I wanted to play Hamlet, it stands to reason
00:28in my family, community, the wedding, all these things.
00:31They would go a certain way.
00:33But I think it's also really exciting to open this play up in new ways
00:38and have more people feel like it's for them
00:41and they can recognize themselves in it.
00:44Hamlet itself as a story is drawn from deep ancient myth.
00:47And if you look at something like the Bhagavad Gita,
00:49the sacred Hindu text, that has a lot of resonances with Hamlet.
00:52And for that reason, those are the first words that you hear
00:56in our adaptation.
00:58So I think it just kind of speaks to this feeling that I have,
01:04it's just that stories like this belong to everyone.
01:06Yeah.
01:07And obviously you have modernized it,
01:09but was it a choice not to modernize the language as well?
01:12You wanted to keep, I guess, something rooted, Anil, in?
01:15Yeah.
01:15Well, I mean, I think the language, the verse is kind of integral to Hamlet.
01:19It felt like, obviously these conversations came up along the way,
01:22but at every juncture it felt strange and wrong to lose that.
01:28Because what have you got left, you know,
01:29and what does modernizing the verse really look like?
01:33It's so much at the heart of its identity and beauty, that verse.
01:38So, yeah.
01:38Shakespeare's work is so incredible.
01:40But, like, when we get these modern, like, you know,
01:42Romeo and Juliet had to become a classic, the Leo version,
01:45that you kind of want to do that with other Shakespeare work as well,
01:48to bring it to the masses.
01:50So it's great that you've done that.
01:52Riz, I think I heard you say that your teacher gave you the play
01:56many, many, many years ago.
01:59Did you imagine then you would, at that point,
02:01be playing Hamlet on the big screen?
02:04I wanted to make this film since I was a teenager.
02:06Okay.
02:06Yeah.
02:07Honestly, I know it sounds crazy, but I really needed this play
02:14at the moment that I experienced it.
02:16Right.
02:16Because Hamlet was feeling the way that I was at that moment.
02:20Hamlet is grieving the illusion,
02:22grieving the illusion that the world is a fair place.
02:24And Hamlet is feeling gaslit about that.
02:27And he's feeling powerless in the face of that.
02:29And finally feels complicit in it.
02:31That's how I felt then.
02:32That's how me and I think how millions of people feel right now,
02:35which is why it's such a timely story for this moment.
02:39But I remember watching the Ethan Hawke and Kenneth Branagh versions of this
02:42and just going, man, so much of this resonates with me.
02:47There's so many similarities between this story
02:49and our lived experience as British Asians
02:51that I want to kind of do my own take on it.
02:55And it's amazing.
02:57Both Ethan Hawke and Kenneth Branagh have seen our version now
03:00and they absolutely adore it.
03:02And I think it's one of the beautiful things about tackling a classic
03:05is you're part of an ongoing conversation.
03:07You know, and you're able to hopefully have this Anil Karia version
03:15inspire a new generation of people who are studying this.
03:18What did they say when they saw your version?
03:20I think they found things in it that they really loved.
03:23I think the biggest thing for them was that
03:25it felt like a very emotional experience.
03:27I think they both felt that the grief was really palpable.
03:30And I think that speaks to Anil's decision
03:32to make it an emotional, embodied experience for the audience
03:36rather than an intellectual one.
03:39And that comes from things like just constantly being with Hamlet,
03:42cutting all the scenes that he's not in,
03:43being over his shoulder, experiencing things
03:46as he is experiencing them means that, you know,
03:49in a way we didn't want to perform Hamlet for people.
03:52We wanted them to experience what Hamlet is experiencing.
03:55So I think that's what they picked up on
03:56and I think what a lot of people are really, you know, connecting with.
04:00Yeah, I really like that.
04:01Like the whole honing in on, like, Hamlet himself
04:03and, like, learning more in that way.
04:05So that was great.
04:06Good job with this, guys.
04:07Amazing.
04:07Lovely to meet you both.
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