Don’t want my documentary to release in India: Sunny Leone

Bollywood actress Sunny Leone is not in the favor of releasing the upcoming documentary on her life, ‘Mostly Sunny’ in India, as she feels it does not do justice to her story.

‘Mostly Sunny’ charts the life of Leone, born Karenjit Kaur Vohra in Sarnia, Ontario, from her childhood in a conservative Sikh family to her shift to Los Angeles, her emergence as one of the biggest adult movie stars in the world and her subsequent mainstream movie career breakthrough in Bollywood.

Leone said she doesn’t want the documentary to release in India as it is less of a film on her life and more of ‘somebody else’s opinion’.

“I hope it doesn’t come to India. Because that’s not the story that is mine. This is somebody else’s opinion, somebody else’s vision. No one has a right to tell your life story except for you,” Leone told PTI in an exclusive interview.

“It’s not a biopic made on my life where you can manipulate and say what you want. It is not like you are appealing to cinematic liberty. This is somebody’s life. This is my life, I take it very personally,” she added.

The Dilip Mehta directed documentary recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, which Leone didn’t attend citing a family function.

Mehta said he was surprised that Leone developed cold feet before the Toronto premiere and said the actress wanted certain changes in the documentary.

When asked about this, Leone said, “It’s really simple, at the end of the day, its my personal story. I surrendered to his vision but when it got to my story, how it looks and the story that is actually told… In my view no one in this entire world has the right to say how my life should be told.”

“I am the one telling the story, it is my life. There were certain things I didn’t like and I wanted it (the documentary) to be for many people to watch, not just one age group. I don’t see my story as a sob story, where something went wrong. That’s not my story,” the actress said.

Leone, opening up about her problems with the documentary, said she didn’t want a film that would disgust people.

“There are so many different things, I don’t even know where to begins. From my eyes, this is a project I wanted to watch sitting with my family and friends.

“If a young woman was looking for encouragement. I wanted that young woman to be able to watch it without going squeamish… There is so much material in there which was not needed, or that was shown. Now you’re trying to show it to people.”

The 35-year-old actress said she was honest in the documentary but its first edit, after almost “18 months and 22,000 hours of raw footage”, left her extremely disappointed.

The actress said she had to attend the family function but anyway if the makers were not willing to show her the documentary then why should she go.

“I had a family affair, which is absolutely true… They didn’t even want to show me a cut of my film. I believe at the end of the day I have a right to watch what is going to be shown at TIFF. If the producer or the director is not showing me my own life story documentary then why should I go?

“At the end, when they finally sent me the final edit, I wasn’t really interested in watching it again because I had watched it five times. They told us point blank that none of the changes we requested them to make, on my life, my story, they were ignored.”

Meanwhile, ‘Mostly Sunny’, is slated for worldwide release in December this year and will have its Asian premiere at Mumbai’s MAMI Film Festival in October.

With PTI inputs