Director’s Cut with Chinmay D. Mandlekar on Manoj Bajpayee’s ‘Governor: The Silent Saviour’: ‘Manmohan Singh is the architect of economic change, but…’ | EXCLUSIVE

‘Governor: The Silent Saviour’ is a serious watch and not for the ‘massy’ audience. But definitely a movie that will make you think. It is engaging, immersive and most importantly hugely relevant. In an EXCLUSIVE Interview with Firstpost, director Chinmay D. Mandlekar mentions why the main emphasis of the movie is not on politicians, but on the Governor.

The film talks about a pivotal chapter in India’s economic history, when the nation was standing on the verge of bankruptcy in 1990.The movie highlights the outrage around the rising tension amongst the common people. In fact, the film opens with a young businessman burning himself alive on the roads of Mumbai because the bank refused him loans. That time the country’s economy was in doldrums. The common people were not aware that we were heading towards bankruptcy.

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Edited excerpts from the interview: 

Manmohan Singh was the architect of this change then why was his role reduced to a very small part?

If you see, the film starts in December 1990 when Mr. Chandra Shekhar's government was in power and when Mr. Yashwant Sinha was the finance minister of our country. Right at that time Mr. Manmohan Singh was nowhere in the picture. Manmohan Singh that yes with great respect, he is the architect and he and Mr. Narsimha Rao were courageous enough to have that budget which came in 1991. But with dates we have given in the film that the film has begun much before that.

In ‘Governor’ too we showed how Manmohan Singh became the finance minister and he changed the face of our economy. And the hero of my film is the ‘Governor’. It is not any politician. It's about a bureaucrat and his team.

 What was the idea that went behind the process of making ‘Governor: The Silent Saviour’?

The story or the basic core idea of making ‘Governor: The Silent Saviour’ was the 1990 crisis.  The story came from one of our writers and he was the one who took this idea to Vipul Shah. After that they have worked on the script for almost four years and the film came to me in 2025. It was a well written draft. After it came to me we did two, three more drafts again. And that is how the film happened.

It was a very interesting idea to tell a story of an economic crisis. Because normally we have war films, we have calamity films, we have films about epidemics, pandemics and we have films about riots and social events. But very rarely there is a film about economics. So that is why I was quite triggered by the idea.

Since the movie is based on a real person, there is a lot of responsibility. What was the research that went behind it?

That was a real crisis in the history of the nation. And also, it is one of the most premier institutions in our country. That is the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). So most of this material is there in the public domain. Whatever has been covered by the newspapers of that time about Mr. Venkatraman when in fact our writers have started researching the project, he was very much alive but he passed away by the end of 2023.

His daughter was gracious enough to lend a lot of support. She herself is an IAS officer now which you can see in the film also. Everybody does not have access to go into the RBI. Also, in the film you have seen the vault of the RBI. So, a lot of research and logistics went behind that. It was a combined effort of the production designer of the VFX producer and the director. Because interestingly our co-producer went from pillar to post to get permission for us going into the RBI. But obviously we were not allowed. But after a lot of effort they agreed for one person to go inside and then that to a very few restricted areas.

Our production designer Rajesh, he went in and saw and then when he came out, and that’s how it happened.

Did you have Manoj Bajpayee in mind all the time?

Manoj Bajpayee was our ‘Governor’ from day one. In fact, to be very honest, Manoj is the one who got me on the film. Because Vipul had an idea of making this film for quite some time. And he had narrated this film to Manoj. And after that when they started looking for a director to take this ahead, that is when I came in.

WATCH the trailer of Manoj Bajpayee’s ‘Governor’ movie here: