Director Tanuja Chandra has signed Sushmita Sen and Shiny Ahuja in the lead for her next venture titled Rocking.

"I can't reveal much about the subject of the film. The only thing I can say is that I will begin shooting for the film sometime in November."

The end of this year will see the release of Tanuja Chandra's Hope And A Little Sugar. The film happens to be her first English venture. Produced by two Americans, Glenn Russow and Scott Pardo, Hope And A Little Sugar is a love story set against the backdrop of September 9/11 that rocked America.

The film stars Mahima Chaudhary, Amit Sayal, Anupam Kher, Suhasini Mulay and Vikram Chatwal.

"Anupam Kher happened to watch the film with the producers in New York and he just loved it. He called and told me how much he liked the film," Chandra says. She further said that working with American producers was a learning experience.

"Their style of functioning is entirely different from ours. This is also the first time that I edited my own film on the Internet. The post-production was also done over the Internet. In fact, I had not met Glenn and Scott till I actually began shooting the film. Even most of the pre-production details had been worked out through emails."

Urmila Matondkar was to do Hope And A Little Sugar initially but was replaced by Mahima. "The film had a US-based Indian producer then. He had a lot of issues and the film could not take off as scheduled. Later Urmila couldn't give the dates I required. So, we had to replace her with Mahima."

Tanuja says that she completed the film in a record time of just 25 days.

Ask her if she felt sad that the films she worked hard on did not get a theatrical release like in the case of the Mahima Chaudhary starrer Film Star, Tanuja says, "Of course, I feel sad. We spent a lot for the film, and later when it was aired on television I obviously felt let down. It is not that I do not respect television as a medium but had Sahara told me in advance that it was for their channel and not for the big screen I would have shot the film accordingly."