Look Back In Anger

“The only mode of expression that I could think of was to make a film. This has taken the form of a docu-drama called Shaheed Shradhanjali and narrates the entire incident in 16 minutes,” says Ghosh,whose last film was the critically acclaimed Woh Chokri in 1994. The film will be screened at the Gateway of India next month and come to Delhi in January.

Beginning with the sequence of terrorists arriving in Mumbai by sea and then spreading out to the Taj,Trident and Nariman House,the documentary uses footage of the actual events. Ghosh then zooms in on a candle march and runs the footage with the photographs of the attack.

“I specifically did not want to use any interviews. That would have diluted the impact of the film. There is no voiceover either. The fact that a small group of gunman could inflict pain in such a monstrous way is enough to impact the viewer,” says Ghosh,who assisted filmmaker Basu Chatterjee in a number of projects and learnt the aesthetics of filmmaking from his father and scriptwriter Nabendu Ghosh.

Ghosh is aware that this film is one of the many that will be made on the subject. For instance,there is a buzz about the American filmmaker Victoria Pitta’s 50-minute-long documentary called Secrets of Death: Mumbai Massacre,which will premier next week in Mumbai. “The subject is dramatic and different filmmakers will come up with different versions,” he says.

His film ends with a background song by his wife,classical vocalist Soma Ghosh who is also the producer of the film. “I composed a shradhanjali song as an extension of our national song Vande Matram,” she says.