National award winning Shahid director Hansal Mehta who describes himself as a subversive filmmaker , is all set to make a film on a gay character's journey from self-denial to social ostracism.

Interestingly the story came to Hansal through the internet.

`It's a story that was mailed to me by a girl called Ishani Banerji.It just blew my mind. I have to tell this story because marginalized people in our society aways interest me,` confesses the director whose next release Citylights is about a migrant couple's self-effacing anonymity in Mumbai.

`We've stopped seeing these nameless migrants in the cities. Their lives never concerned us. Now they've become invisible,` says Hansal who has again cast Rajkummar Rao in the lead.

Hansal describes City Lights as a sequel to his year 2000 satire on migration Dil Pe Mat La Yaar.To portray abject poverty and ground-level austerity Rajkummar Rao and his leading lady Patralekha had to shoot under the harshest of circumstances.

Recounts Hansal, `My producers Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt were willing to provide all the comforts required for shooting. However I deliberately made them shoot under gruelling conditions. No makeup van, no luxuries were allowed.`

Hansal describes his partnership with the very talented Rajkummar Rao as `unbreakable`.

However his next film about the gay hero won't star Rajkummar but Nawazuddin Siddiqui. `I need an older actor to play the gay character. The story takes the character through a very wide chronological arc.Nawaz is more suited to the character.But I am writing a very big biographical story for Rajkummar which would be set in the Hindi film industry during the 1950s. That's the film Rajkummar and I are doing next.`

Marginal heroes would continue to haunt Hansal's cinema. In real life too the filmmaker is haunted by communal forces taking over the country.

Hansal recently signed a controversial petition pleading for voters to desist from voting for Narendra Modi.

Says Mehta, `I am not asking voters to not vote for Narendra Modi. I am asking them to vote against communal divisive forces. God save this country if such forces come into power.`