The International Film Festival of Rotterdam (IFFR) invited Tees to premiere in the Limelight section of this year’s edition, but Banerjee was unable to secure the portal’s approval to screen the film. Netflix confirmed it has no plans to release the feature, but has not commented on the reasons for shelving it, as per a report in Deadline. The portal further has confirmed that it has given Banerjee permission to further send links of the film to the potential buyers. The streamer doesn’t support festival screenings of its films.
Thus, now, Dibakar says he’s put in a ‘chicken and egg situation’. The filmmaker told Deadline that the streamer didn’t give him any reason except that they don’t know when is it a right time to release it. Moreover, because of what happened with ‘Tandav’, the streamer is reluctant to release the film out of the fear of being similarly targeted. But Banerjee assures his film is very different from ‘Tandav’.
Tees is one of several features and series that have stalled. ‘Tees’ revolves around a middle-class Muslim family across three generations. ‘Tees’ stars Naseeruddin Shah, Kalki Koechlin, Huma Qureshi, Shashank Arora and Neeraj Kabi. Banerjee believes it’s his best film to date. He has started to contact distributors, investors, producers and other parties, both in India and internationally, who may be interested in acquiring the film. Dibakar’s last release was ‘Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar’ starring Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor.
