Ordinary people and their lives inspire filmmaker Sona Jain

How in the world did you manage to make a movie like this? You’re not even married,” writer-director Vishal Bhardwaj had said after the screening of my film, For Real,” says 34-year-old filmmaker Sona Jain. “I am single and yet managed to decode the life of a married couple. I guess it’s because I wrote it from a child’s point of view,” she adds. The film, which took nine years to complete, is what Jain describes as a “side-effect of her years in New York as a film student”.

If she managed to capture the layers marriages and relationships contain, Jain says it’s because she is a people watcher. “I love to meet and interact with people. The beauty of life lies in the dynamics of human interaction,” says Jain, having already garnered critical acclaim at various international festivals for her film. Seen from the eyes of a six-year-old, For Real is an entertaining yet moving take on everything that is going around her. Revolving around the lives of a busy workaholic father and a mother who has lost her sense of being, For Real is a movie that zooms into the lives of real people. “These writings are my take on relationships. An artist never gives up the child in her,” she says. “For Real happened when I got homesick and started writing stories about Delhi and of this little girl. When you are writing without any agenda, magical things may happen.”