Screenwriter and photographer Sooni Taraporevala is getting ready to direct another film a decade after her directorial debut with the National Award winning family drama Little Zizou. To be produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur, founder of Roy Kapur Films, Ballet Boys is slated to start shooting in January 2019. The movie will recount the true-life journey of two Bombay lads Manish Chauhan and Amiruddin Shah, from disadvantaged backgrounds, who gain admission to the prestigious Royal Ballet School in London and the Oregon Ballet Theater, according to news reports. Their Israeli American mentor Yehuda Ma’or supported their efforts.
From l: Amiruddin Shah, Sooni Taraporevala, Manish Chauhan
Photo: Rohan Raut
Taraporevala had earlier directed a 15-minute virtual reality film on the lads (see "Bombay ballet boys’ virtual reality,” Parsiana, July 21, 2017). She has been working on the script "for the last few months,” noted the MumbaiMirror (MM) of September 12, 2018. The director is in the process of casting and added that "her male leads will go through months of training in ballet before she begins shooting with them,” noted the MM report. The Times of India of September 14 noted that the film will feature numbers by choreographer Shiamak Davar and ballet sequences to be directed by Ma’or. Parsiana’s request to Taraporevala for further information was declined. "The information the producers want to reveal at this point is in the articles that have come out,” said the Padma Shri awardee.
Taraporevala had earlier collaborated as screenwriter with Roy Kapur on Mira Nair’s 2007 film The Namesake, an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s eponymous novel.