Facing REALITY

Have you seen Ashutosh Gowarikars Lagaan?
Of course I did. It worked like a trigger. I began to wonder that if a film that uses a team sport within a period context can be such a hit when it is based entirely on fiction,why not make a film on a real incident that actually happened on home soil? I knew about the historic win of our Mohan Bagan in the IFA Shield Final against its British opponents,East Yorkshire Regiment on July 29,1911. It is considered a miracle in the history of football and British rule in India.

How did you go about the entire procedure?
I was extremely focussed on researching the period and the incidents that led up to the final match. I also went around knocking at the doors of big producers with my script hoping to rope them in. But nothing worked. The big producers wanted me to cast big stars as the main players Shibdas Bhaduri and Abhilash. I did not want any star,big or small,to impose his image on my real-life characters. So I waited patiently and continued to persuade new and old producers to finance my film. After a year and a half,a new production house,Magic Hour Entertainment,decided to produce my film and agreed to my terms of not casting stars.

Where did you draw your actors from?
The lead cameos,who are not footballers in the film,are known faces from television. I took them solely on grounds of their forceful acting and their ability to slip under the skin of the characters. Most of the actors who portray the role of players are mostly drawn from theatre and Hirak Das,who plays Shibdas Bhaduri,is from Mumbai. Two of them play professional football regularly. There are some others who play football well. Among them is Ronodeb Bose who is the grandson of Soumitra Chatterjee.

How were the actors trained in the game?
We took them to the maidan where the Aryans practice as early as six in the morning for three long months before shooting began. We took the services of Manojit Das,the former captain of East Bengal who has coached the Indian team. He even created the look for the players.

What about the actors who played the British characters officers,policemen,footballers,etc?
Our casting director Dipak Haldar would wait with his team outside Netaji Subhash International Airport. The minute a White tourist crossed the exit point,his boys would go and grab him/her and ask him/her to work in an Indian film. Most of them were thrilled. Some of them did not even ask for money and stepped in for the sheer joy of working in an Indian film. None of them are actors. So,we finally had an international cast coming in from Ukraine,Philadephia and even Australia. A few are local Anglo Indians.

What do you think is the USP of Egaro?
There are several USPs. According to me,this is the first ever period film shot entirely on actual locations around Barrackpore,Chinsurah,Shahebganj,Palta and Chandannagar. The match was shot on a football field in Howrah Maidan. Of its 120-minute running time,35 minutes are taken by the football finals. The entire film was shot in a single schedule of 33 days. We worked on a streamline budget of a crore. Only 25 prints of the movie were released and nothing was spent on marketing and promoting the film. This is perhaps the first Indian feature film where a national sport like football is blended into the underground movement towards Indias Independence.

The film has got tax exemption? Are you happy about it?
Frankly,I did not expect this kind of positive response to my film in an industry that is crowded with big budget productions,lavish production values,song sequences shot in foreign locations,big stars,etc. It explains that the audience is receptive if the subject is good. This success is overwhelming and my producers are also negotiating with a distribution house for Bengali films for a North American release.