Mumbai, Oct 1 (IANS): The release of "Soundtrack" was postponed from Sep 30 to Oct 7 because of lead actor Soha Ali Khan's father Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi passing away and not due to too many films releasing that day, the film's director Neerav Ghosh has revealed.

It has been a tough fortnight for Soha. She was in the middle of promoting her new film when her father had to be hospitalised. Bravely, the daughter continued with her nationwide promotion.

And then the worst happened. Soha's father passed away, leaving her too broken to even think of the film.

The film's producer Saregama and director Neerav Ghosh had two options. Either to go ahead with the promotion without Soha or postpone the release.

They opted for the latter. The official reason given for the postponement was -- too many releases on Sep 30.

Says Ghosh: "It was certainly not the crowd of releases that bothered us. Because we've gone from one clutter to another the following week. No. It was Soha. All of us -- me, Rajeev Khandelwal, Mrinalini Sharma, Soha -- have become one closely-knit family. And if one of us is in distress, the rest of us can't go on normally. We definitely postponed because of Soha's bereavement."

The decisive moment came in Delhi when the "Soundtrack" director was live on air with Soha on the day of Pataudi's death.

"It was ghoulish. We were in a segment promoting our film. During the break, we could hear them loudly talking about Soha's father. To her credit, Soha was very composed. But we decided, that was it. We decided to put aside the film until she was ready to face the world and her work again."

Neerav has been in touch with Soha. The actress will join the promotion of the film from next week after the memorial service in the capital Saturday.