Irrfan Khan and Vidya Balan's film The Last Tenant's footage almost got thrown away, says director Saarthak R Dasgupta

THe legendary doer Irrfan Khan passed aside sextuplet years agone but on his dying anniversary this year on April 30, his fans received a special surprise as a new film of his, The Last Tenant, released that day on YouTube. Co-starring Vidya Balan and shot 26 years ago, the film marked their only on-screen collaboration, and it is being received well by the audience. Overwhelmed with emotions, the director of the film Saarthak R Dasgupta says it comes with “mixed emotions”. Having made the film in all of their initial years in the industry, Saarthak R Dasgupta says he had no idea what he was doing while making that film. “Those days you didn't have digital backups, and there were two betas in which all these rushes were there. One beta got lost and I never found it, and the other one was full of fungus so it was unusable. So, I forgot about the film all this time,” he shares, until two weeks ago when while shifting houses he found an unlabelled VHS tape: “I thought it would probably be my wedding video and who would find a VHS player in today’s time to play that. So I was about to throw it, but then I felt that maybe, let me just check what is there, and out comes this film.”Since the video quality was not quite good and it had been 26 years, Saarthak was apprehensive about putting the film out. “We figured that Irrfan's sixth death anniversary was coming, so I felt I needed to pay tribute. I had found this film after 26 years and it was perhaps a sign. So I decided to put it on that same day. I didn't even speak to Vidya before as it was such a quick turnaround,” he shares. But Vidya Balan was quite excited on retrieval of The Last Tenant. “After having put it out, I sent a message to Vidya and she was very excited. I learned that they have been in a film together before, but did not share the screen. So this was the only film where these two legendary actors shared screen space. So, for her too, this is special.” Vidya shot for the film in 1999 and 2000, and by that time, she had only done the TV show Hum Paanch. But it wasn’t how Saarthak discovered her. “I never watched TV, so I had seen her only in a bank advertisement where she played a soldier's wife. The camera slowly panned into her really expressive face and I was hooked. I didn't know who she was, I just felt that this girl is so beautiful and I wanted to approach her, and eventually I did,” he informs.While Saarthak maintained a good equation with Irrfan Khan even after the film, he laments not being able to work together with him again. “We kept talking about working together again but he became too big for me to afford him or to get his dates. I hoped that someday we’ll work together again, but he passed away,” he says, adding that he is glad with the response The Last Tenant is receiving. “What actually surprises me is the kind of fandom he still has. The response has been crazy and the kind of love he still has is unprecedented.” Saarthak shares that he sent a message to Irrfan’s wife, Sutapa Sikdar about the film but hasn’t received any response yet. Meanwhile, he is still hoping to present a better version of his film in the future. “I'm still looking for the Beta, trying to retrieve film from the fungus. But the other Beta is still lost. Maybe someday I'll get it and I'll probably have a better version of it in a better quality,” he ends.