“I find love stories too boring,” declares Tigmanshu Dhulia during a freewheeling conversation about his upcoming film, Ghamasaan. The filmmaker’s voice carries a frustration similar to his much-quoted dismissal of cinema as the infamous Ramadhir Singh from Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur. And like Ramadhir, Tigmanshu is excited by the world of crime and politics, something he has explored right from his first film, Haasil. With Ghamasaan, he returns to the world of dacoits, which he approached earlier with an earthy realism in Paan Singh Tomar. When asked what continues to attract him to this landscape, Tigmanshu is quick to chime in.“Mera Mangal bohot strong hai (I have a strong Mars in my horoscope),” he says, smiling, and explains that he is approached only to make films about dacoits and cops. “I have been a huge admirer of these films since I was a kid. If I was not a filmmaker, I would have been in the army or police.”There is more to his reasoning than that. Tigmanshu feels that there’s a lot to explore in characters living in rural hinterlands. “I don’t find urban characters as interesting, as people are not facing such conflicts in cities. There is no caste problem in Mumbai. Your surname doesn’t matter here as much, but that’s a reality in villages. So, when so much is happening in the world, why should I watch your love stories? What’s there in it? That’s why I don’t like them,” he says.Tigmanshu is picky about other genres too. “I don’t watch every Hindi movie,” he says. He has not seen some of Arshad Warsi’s popular comedy films like the Golmaal series or Hungama. That’s what made him look at Arshad differently when he decided to cast the actor as a dreaded dacoit in Ghamasaan. “I had seen him in Sehar and, of course, in Munna Bhai MBBS. So, I never looked at him as a comedian. I knew he is a very accomplished actor,” says Tigmanshu.