Paanch

Paanch was never officially released. A copy of the film was leaked online in 2010. The film may be released on OTT in the near future.

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Paanch was leaked online by an unidentified person, who credited the film's director with having given him a copy of the film to leak online. Years later, Anurag Kashyap confirmed the news and said he leaked it online because he wanted people to see his film.

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According to Anurag Kashyap, everyone who saw the film was surprised that it was denied certification. People congratulated him for the film's realistic approach. Directors such as Ram Gopal Varma, Govind Nihalani, Sudhir Mishra, Kundan Shah, Ketan Mehta, Aziz Mirza and Farhan Akhtar liked the film. Only Ashutosh Gowariker said he understood why the censor board had refused certification. "It is really disturbing," he said.

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Anurag Kashyap said: "The censor board officials are not willing to accept that people's sensibilities, language and tastes have changed. They told me that while characters in other films speak chaste Urdu or Hindi, my film's protagonists speak abusive language. These officials refuse to hear the language of today's youth. Do you hear people speaking Urdu on the streets? Do young roommates in Bombay speak Urdu to each other? The board [objected to] my film's obscene dialogues… sexual innuendoes. My view is that what my film's characters say has no double meaning — the only thing the dialogues are meant to convey is sexual connotation. When young men wave at a girl or feel a friend's leg when they fall in love with someone, why should that have a non-sexual meaning? The character of Pondy (played by Vijay Maurya), one of the five protagonists, is absolutely positive. We can say the same for Murgi (Aditya Srivastava)."

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The film was refused a certificate by the censor board. Twice.

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Anurag Kashyap said, "I know the film will have to be cleared. If the court refuses to grant a certificate, we will take it to the High Court. And we will get justice there. Courts can ban a film only if it is anti-national, anti-India. But Paanch has nothing to do with nationalism. It is a police thriller."

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Anurag Kashyap said, "Since my film was denied certification I have not been able to do anything else. I have not written anything. I have not earned a single rupee in the last four months. I am living off my wife. *laughs*. When this happened I went into a complete depression. I have recovered now but I still cannot concentrate on writing. I spend some time with theatre groups to keep myself busy."

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Anurag Kashyap said, "Everyone who saw the film was surprised that it was denied certification. People congratulate me for the film's realistic approach. Directors such as Ram Gopal Varma, Govind Nihalani, Sudhir Mishra, Kundan Shah, Ketan Mehta, Aziz Mirza and Farhan Akhtar liked my film. Only Ashutosh Gowariker said he understood why the censor board refused certification. It is really disturbing," he said. He said. But the film's aim is to disturb. People are especially shocked by what happens in the second half. They find the idea that ordinary people like us can be so savage and cold-blooded very disturbing. But that is the film's subject… I held more than 30 trial screenings, and at each one the audience left the cinema supporting the film, but they enjoyed every moment of it."

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The film is loosely based on the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in Pune in 1976-77.

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Anurag Kashyap had also seen a film called Fun, about two mentally unstable girls who kill an old woman. And Paanch was ready to be filmed.

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Before Tutu Sharma bought Paanch, Ram Gopal Varma was supposed to produce Paanch for Kashyap. On one condition: write Satya for RGV, and then he would produce Paanch for Anurag. So Anurag began writing Satya, which was made and released. Unfortunately, RGV's plan to make Paanch fizzled out after Satya.

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Anurag Kashyap said: "Around 1995, I used to spend a lot of time with Imtiaz Ali at St Xavier's College in Mumbai. A band called Greek (now Pralay) performed regularly around the university, and I hung out with them like a fan. I wanted to make a film about a rock band, and that was the birth of Paanch. But the idea did not work. I tried to reshape the concept around a band because I was very influenced by a song in the 1988 film Om-Dar-Ba-Dar. But it never went beyond a point (I returned to the idea in the song Emotional Atyachaar in Dev. D). Then, when I started working with (television director) Shivam Nair, I came across many crime files, including the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders (on which Paanch is based). He resembled Luke, the leader of the rock band in my film; he was a genius; he studied, came first at university, and also had very strong views on crime. In 1998 I decided to combine the two stories."

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The refusal to release the film was made on six grounds: the film glorifies violence; it shows how a crime is carried out (the killing of a police officer); it shows excessive drug use; it has dialogues with double meanings (containing sexual innuendoes); it has no positive character; it carries no social message.

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The censor board refused to grant a certificate when the film first came up for release. The film was then sent to a review committee, which saw the film and upheld the board's earlier decision.

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Shooting on Paanch began seven years after Anurag first wrote the script. But even after shooting started, things did not go well. The financiers objected to the gloomy and depressing nature of the house where most of the film was shot. They objected to the depressing atmosphere, the walls and other things. The cash flow stopped and the shoot had to be halted until a new flow of funding could be arranged. Later, producer Tutu Sharma set Paanch aside and went on to make bigger commercial films. This resulted in further pauses in the shooting of Paanch. Eventually, Paanch was ready for release in 2000. As for the songs in Paanch, the main condition the financiers set for backing the film was that it had to have songs. Since the film was about a rock band, songs were inevitable. Anurag had initially planned to have short song pieces (a few lines and then a transition to the next scene). But when the financiers made it a condition that the film have full songs, Anurag, in complete frustration, pumped five songs in right at the start of the film to satisfy them. The five songs were later reduced to three. Anurag did not direct the last song in the film. According to him, the entire film was made for One Crore and Twenty Lakh (rupees). When the producers decided to add one more song towards the end of the film nine months after it was completed, they hired someone else to direct it. The money spent on just the last song was Seventy Lakh.

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Anurag showed Paanch at this Jura wonder. At the end of the screening, a man I guessed to be a primary school teacher called Anurag over and asked him what cinema meant to him. Anurag asked what it meant to him, and the man, without blinking, said it meant 'healthy entertainment'. According to Masterji, healthy entertainment was not present in Paanch. He asked why there were no 'positive characters' in the film. Obviously it would have been a complete waste of time to explain the concept of film noir to the gentleman; instead Anurag explained that all the characters seemed positive to him to some degree.

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Anurag Kashyap said, "I will fight to the end for my film's premiere. My future as a filmmaker depends on it. If I give up now, I will never be able to make the kind of films I believe in. People will not see me as a responsible director and will not respect my views on how a film should be made. I have to fight, however long it takes. I am already tired but hopeful. In fact, I am sure the film will be good." Its release is a matter of time and I am ready to wait."

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Anurag Kashyap said, "I have become very cynical, I have said many things I did not want to. I was disappointed and felt I was being treated this way. I gave in to my emotions without controlling my words. This upset many people who cannot be blamed. They did not realise I said these things out of cynicism. Now I am more measured."

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The film was initially titled "Mirage".

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The film is set between 1976 and 1977.

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Anurag Kashyap said that when he went to a producer's office with the Paanch script, he thought they would assume he was the son of a rich father who wanted to waste his money and that the film would go to waste; he also said that Paanch sat in a tin box for years, which affected his health because he had gained a lot of weight at the time, but he later decided to focus on his other projects.

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Nana Patekar's film Phansi Ka Phanda was based on the same real-life story.

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Tejaswani Kolhapure felt she did nothing bold in the film, but her character was considered too Western and the censor board did not pass the film.

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The film resembled the Marathi film Maaficha Saakshidaar, which was based on the same true story.

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