Digpal Lanjekar: True Historical Movie Director

Digpal Lanjekar

The Marathi film industry is speedily moving towards making movies with good budgets. But to provide exceptional content with this high budget is really challenging. Very few directors from the industry can fulfill this challenge. And amongst these names, an emerging name is Digpal Lanjekar. Digpal has come in the spotlight after delivering two consecutive hit movies on the life of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj over a period of two years. since the great director Bhalji Pendharkar's movies based on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, no one had embarked on such a mission. After 40 years Digpal has accepted the challenge of creating movies on this topic has succeeded. His passion was strengthened by his meetings with great historians like Ninad-ji Bedekar.

His first movie was Farzand which was released in June 2018. The movie was based on one of the Sardar's of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Farzand was an unsung hero. After the movie was released, the audience loved the movie. Digpal's passion and efforts had succeeded. It was not only the box office numbers that made the news but the fact that it ran for more than 50 days in theatres, too.
His second movie was Fatteshikast launched in November 2019. The movie was based on the legendary campaign by Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj on Pune when he performed the country's first surgical strike against the Mughal commander Shaistakhan. This movie was also a big hit. After the first movie, there was only a time period of one year in which Digpal completed the writing of the second film, shooting, direction, VFX, and post-production. In this time period, Digpal was also able to meet with the descendants of the sardars of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj and able to convince them to be a part of his movies. This enabled him to get a bunch of original documentation of historical events. Digpal Said, "I have decided to shoot in real location to get the feel and look right. It has been a cumbersome task, but my team has been wonderful". In his movies, Digpal reprises multiple roles of writer, director, dialogue writer, lyricist and also makes a cameo appearance as a character.

Digpal said, Maratha Light Infantry's Belgaum training centre has decided to archive his film "Fatteshikast". The Movie will be a part of the their library and soldiers joining the Maratha Light Infantry Belgaum centre will be shown the film which is a great honour. "Fatteshikast" has also been awarded with many reputable awards and recognitions.

Digpal's style of movie making is not only appreciated by the audience but also his producers as well. In one of the interviews, Mr. Ajay Arekar the producer of the movie "Fatteshikast" said that ‘Digpal not only has a deep sense of movie direction and storytelling but also a detailed understanding of the producers' concerns and risks. At all times, Digpal has a plan ready for the next steps, the budgets and fail-safe scenarios.' Owing to this attitude, the producers are very happy and agreed to support Digpal in his journey forward and are producing his next couple of movies as well.

Songs are a very important part of any movie in India. The songs in Digpal's movies are very popular. Digpal also gets credit for the beautiful songs because he has penned most of the songs from his movies. The interesting part is that he has studied folk literature and music styles to write songs in folk dialects. This makes the songs very lifelike and perfect fit for the scenario in which the theme or the scene in the movie demands.

Digpal also plans his movie promotions wisely so that an inquisitive thought is triggered in the mindsets of the audience well before the movie is launched. The title poster of his upcoming movie "Jungjauhar", which displayed in a very attractive font has already created a buzz in Social media. Promotion of the movies is a key strong point of Digpal which the producers appreciate and because of this more and more producers are approaching Digpal for future projects.

Digpal's upcoming movie is the ‘JungJauhar'. The shooting of the entire movie was completed in just 26 days. This movie is all set to be released in June 2020 and is based on the event in Pavan Khind when Baji Prabhu Deshpande and three hundred members of the Bandal clan sacrificed their lives so that Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj could safely reach the destination.

After JungJauhar, Digpal plans to create a few movies based on the lives of legendary characters and unsung heroes not just from the time period of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj but also from the Indian independence movement. The idea and script for this film is also finalised and scriptwriting is also in progress for this movie. Digpal plans to make this movie accessible to a wider range of audience by having it made and released it in the Hindi film industry with the central character being played by a renowned Hindi actor. When asked about details, Digpal said ‘The movie is going to be about a brave freedom fighter who teaches the Britishers a lesson in their own home i.e. London in the year 1910'.

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