Shrikant Mohta of Shree Venkatesh Films, venturing into an Aparna Sen film for the first time, says, “We teamed up with Rinadi (Aparna Sen) for two reasons. First she is a great filmmaker and second, we really liked the script. Our last off-mainstream Bengali film was Rituparno Ghosh’s Chokher Bali quite some years ago. We felt it was time we went back to at least one off-beat project. The scripts that came to us between Chokher Bali and Iti Mrinalini were no good. At times, we were not convinced about the director’s ability to bring the script across on cinema. But Rinadi is a different cup of tea altogether and we are looking forward to working with her.”

“Iti Mrinalini is autobiographical only in the sense that it carries images and experiences I have gathered over the years as an actress in the film industry and by no means is it the story of my life, as an actress, or otherwise. I am looking forward to working with Konkona because she is a fine actress. Let me add that I do not cherish playing the older Mrinalini in this film but it was the resemblance that made me decide. The resemblance is necessary for this film. We have strong similarities in our body language, our manner of speech, carrying ourselves and this is very necessary when we are going to play the same character distanced in terms of age,” says Aparna. She does not wish to reveal any more because she is still working on the script. For those who are familiar with her screenplays, they are a model lesson in screenplay writing, with camera lenses penciled in the margins, dialogue written out clearly as in a written and published play, optional camera angle spelt out and at places, even alternative closing shots in a given scene are detailed in.M
Aparna is also looking forward to working under the Shree Venkatesh banner because they were planning to team up for a long time. The rest of the cast is yet to be penciled in while they wait for the film’s shooting to begin in September within Kolkata for starters.