Italian director Lakshen Sucameli says Irrfan Khan was his ‘first choice’ to play Osho

Ten years after his dream project to make a feature film starring Irrfan Khan as Osho Rajneesh failed, Italian filmmaker Lakshen Sucameli has made a documentary about the controversial spiritual guru.

A compressed version of Osho's Ten Thousand Shades documentary series titled 'Osho the Movie' (one hour and 40 minutes) was recently screened at the Yashwant International Film Festival organized by the Maharashtra State Government. The series will be released sometime later.

Sucameli said that if he had his way, he would have made a film with Irrfan, who he felt was a suitable choice for the role of Osh. “Over ten years ago, I did a feature film, but it didn't happen, so I switched to this (documentary series), which lasted five years. Irrfan Khan was my first choice and he liked Osho. "And if I were the producer and if he was still alive, he would have been the first choice," the director told in an interview.

This Italian filmmaker traveled to India in 1978 to meet Osho, then considered one of the world's most controversial spiritual figures. The director lived in Osho's ashram in Pune and Oregon, USA. Sucameli, whom Osho gave the name Lakshen, said his wish was to make a film about him. “I first met Osho in 1978. Since then I had two goals in life – to know myself and to share his vision. When I started working as a filmmaker, I knew that one day I would make a film about him,” he added.

Sucameli claimed to have met Indian producers like Subhash Ghai, Pritish Nandy and Bobby Bedi and approached Irrfan Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Kamal Haasan, besides writer Kamlesh Pandey of "Rang De Basanti" fame among the actors. Ghai also announced a project on Osho, but it did not materialize. According to Sucameli, then Indian producers were not serious about international co-production. “Indian producers are not really open to international film. They are so happy with Bollywood. Even though they know Osh, and even though they saw the potential, they weren't very interested in the idea of ​​an international co-production," he added. The director stated that the key difference between the feature film and the documentary series is that he was able to play more with imagination when making the film, but stayed closer to reality in the latter.

The documentary series is structured into five sixty-minute episodes. The documentary features never-before-seen footage of Osho recorded around the world and will also explore different periods of the spiritual guru's life through the stories of people who were associated with him. "It's about his life, his experiences with the people who are with him. The film is more of a story with some drama, something added to give the audience something to watch as well." Sucameli, himself a devotee of the Osho movement, said the documentary series is not propaganda, adding that it offers a broader perspective than "Wild Wild Country." from Netflix which was released in 2018.

"This documentary series is not a piece of propaganda. On the contrary, it examines all elements of Osh's life, including the questionable ones like his return to India, the mysterious three days he spent in an Oklahoma prison cell, imprisoned under a false name and allegedly poisoned, and other things,” he said. Speaking about the release of the documentary series, Sucameli said: “At the moment we are trying to take it to different festivals and make a deal with Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ (Hotstar).