Exclusive! Chandreyee Ghosh on Mission Everest: There is no ‘box-office face’ here and Everest is our hero

Chandreyee Ghosh is all geared up for her next release, Mission Everest. Directed by Debaditya Bandyopadhyay, the film delves into the expedition of braveheart mountaineer Sunita Hazra. The team spent days in the mountains to recreate the expedition. The film will hit the theatre on September 30 along with the Sonada adventure Karna Subarner Guptodhon, Parambrata Chatterjee’s Boudi Canteen, and Dev and Prosenjit Chatterjee’s Kacher Manush. In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, Chandreyee talks about her experience and the competition it will face from the other big Puja releases. Read on…   

Three other major films will also be released on the same day. Isn’t there too much competition?

We have been working on this film for a while now. We have faced a lot of challenges and all of us went through extreme conditions while shooting. All we wanted was to have a proper release of the film and now it is happening – that too in Puja. I am looking forward to it. Anyway, due to the pandemic, a lot of backlogs are there hence expecting a free window of a week seems impossible. Yes, there is indeed no so-called ‘box-office success face’ in the film but it has the emotion of conquering Everest. Mount Everest is the face of the film. It is a wonder that a Bengali film could be imagined to be this grand. The moot point is that there is no end to competitions and I am optimistic about my film. 

What will go in favour of the film you think?

For Bengali people, there is an emotion attached to Everest. Also, after two years, people will go all out for this Puja. In 2020, there was practically no Puja. In 2021, there were restrictions. And now in this year, evidently, people are going all out. So the number of cine-goers will go up.

Second, People in Bengal have not seen anything that we shot in the film. Then there is the intriguing life of Sunita Hazra. Every corner of life is full of surprises. She hails from a middle-class humble background and not from an affluent household. There is an emotional connection with her. We see how her husband, despite being a mountaineer himself paved the way for his wife. 

Also read: Chandreyee Ghosh on Mission Everest: Shooting at -24 degrees C, that too at 4 am was not easy

And then comes the expedition. Not only Sunita but the other characters in her team are also equally interesting. At one point everybody thought Sunita died in the expedition. And then she conquered the peak. 

In Hollywood, we have seen many films on expeditions. We barely watch anything like this in India. The fight with nature was stupendous. In fact, our shooting was no less challenging. In all fairness, we could have shot the film in a studio with a chroma background. We chose to go to a real location – not Everest but in Spiti. We shot in January – a time when even the local people usually come down to a lower altitude. 

Tell us about your experience…

It was a life-changing experience. I am a changed person now. I have never done anything more challenging than this in my life. I had no idea how my body would react. We shot for 40 days altogether. We used to start at around 6 a.m. Our car used to take us to a point. We used to trek for 45 minutes to our camp. I could see nothing but different shades of white snow. I could see the pugmarks of snow leopards. Every bit of our gear was authentic. It was not just about physical strength, but the requirement of mental strength was also very crucial. There is no vegetation or an iota of human neighborhoods. There was no proper food. I survived on instant noodles. Another staple was roti and dal. Forget about social media, I could not even talk to my family as there was barely any network. But it was a fulfilling experience and I have never done anything as challenging as this before.