I had to walk a kilometer to get to a washroom: Nusrat

In

Zulfiqar

, director Srijit Mukherji promises to take you into a Kolkata you've never seen before. Dilapidated buildings, slums, the dockyards -the film shows you parts of the city that you may have never seen before, at least in Bengali films.
���There are some fantastic spots in the city people don't know about. We shot extensively near the port. Then there is this place near Park Circus, which has a Roman amphitheatre kind of feel. We shot some of the most important scenes in these two places. There is a high-voltage action sequence, that we shot on the second Hooghly bridge. It's a bike racing scene, and some of the stunts even scared me,��� said the director.

Nusrat Jahan, who plays Rani Talapat ra, Srijit's take on

Cleopatra

, too had a tough time shooting in these `real' locations. ���It was different and challenging. We shot in these moor-like areas, in dilapidated buildings. There was this theatre too, an old one, in a shambles, which we used for a scene. In fact, it was such a desolate area that I had to walk around a kilometer to get to a washroom,��� said Nusrat.

For

Paoli

, who plays Karishma Ahmed,

Julius Caesar

's wife Calphurnia, this shoot was special, not just because it's her first film with Srijit but also because it was very fulfilling. ���The buildings were falling down, the walls were coming apart, we shot in some of the dreariest old buildings of central Kolkata. In one scene, which was supposed to be canned during the magic hour, I had to walk on a ledge. Yes, there were harnesses and all, but to give an okay shot, in that 10-15 minute time-span, that too for a crane shot... it was extremely risky . In another scene, I am seen hallucinating that the walls are closing in on me, after smoking up.Those makeshift walls had to be placed in that dilapidated building and I was constantly scared that it would all tumble down. Thank god, everything went smoothly ,��� said Paoli.