“Firaaq” a work of fiction based on a thousand TRUE stories.

Nandita Das has proved herself a very sensitive and intelligent director she has made this debut film with utmost care. I appreciate her. She should be more praise worthy, progressive and courageous if she could make film before this one, titled like “The Godhra Incident”, “Brutality of Aurangzeb”, “Jajiya Tax was Reasonable” and “Brutality of Taliban in Afghanistan”. There are 10000 sorrowful true stories are waiting of Kashmiri Pundits to be made film over them, please Nanditaji and Percept Picture Company make a film on this subject you both are very progressive and courageous.

FIRAAQ relates to lives of common people after the riots in Gujarat, which took place after Godhra incident. Film narrates six different stories not connected with each other. Nor they have similarity, nor do they assemble towards conclusion. These parallel narrative threads revolve in the region of Muslim Hindu Girlfriends, or a Muslim Hindu married couple. There is a transitory mention, that more trouble may be brewing, and we hold our armrests in expectancy of an explosive face-off that unites the contrasting people and pieces of information thus far, particularly with the subplot regarding the acquirement of a revolver by a cluster of vengeful Muslims.

Notwithstanding selecting such a profound subject in her directorial unveiling film, film actress Nandita Das has been successful in treating it with utmost compassion and technical elegance. With gifted technical support from optimum technicians like Ghajini fame cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran and editor Sreekar Prasad Guru, Yuva fame, actress become director Nandita Das has well arranged cast of endowed actors who took the film to an astonishingly up level.

Star Cast :
Naseeruddin Shah as Khan Sahib
Paresh Rawal as Sanjay
Deepti Naval as Aarti
Raghuveer Yadav as caretaker
Sanjay Suri as Sameer Sheikh
Shahana Goswami as Munira
Nowaz as Hanif
Tisca Chopra as Anuradha Desai

Director – Nandita Das
Music director – Rajat Dholakia, Piyush Kanojia
Screenplay – Shuchi Kothari, Nandita Das
Cinematographer – Ravi K. Chandran
Editor – Sreekar Prasad
Sound – Manas Choudhary
Production Designer – Gautam Sen
Producers – Harindra M. Singh, Shailendra M. Singh
Production Company – Percept Pictures Company
Language – Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, English
Runtime – 101 minutes

“Mere pas maa hai” said music director of this film A. R. Rahman at the time of taking “Oscar awards” for this film his mother was present there. This film Slumdog Millionaire relates to the story of children of Asia’s largest slum inside Mumbai in India.

The film, which is recognized world over after being recognized by “Eight Oscar Awards”, does need neither any introduction nor any reviews. Go straight to the cinema hall, film is free from entertainment tax in many states, see it from very beginning to the end, and write yourself a review. A very realistic film of today’s slum life and human behavior, a must see for everyone.

An 18 years old boy named Jamal  Malik the street kid or say slumdog from Dharavi the slums of Mumbai is just one question away from winning 20 million rupees on Indian TV show “Who wants to be a millionaire” being watched by whole big nation. The show breaks for lack of time and on suspicion of cheating, police arrests him that how could a slum boy know so much and tortures him. Now the whole story revolves in flash back. Each chapter of boy’s life pinpoints to his answers to each question at TV show. The final day comes and the boy becomes millionaire before 60 million viewers.

Oscar Academy awards won by this film are –

1. Best Picture
2. Best Director
3. Best Adapted Screenplay
4. Best Cinematography
5. Best Original Score (music)- A. R. Rahman
6. Best Original Song – Jai Ho – A. R. Rahman with Gulzar
7. Best Film Editing
8. Best Sound Mixing – Resul Pookutty (Indian) and 2 British

Stars of the film are Dev Patel as Jamal Malik the hero. Ayush Mahesh Khedekar is younger Jamal. Tanay Chheda is middle age Jamal. Freida Pinto as Latika the heroin, Rubina Ali is younger Latika (a real slums girl child from Mumbai). Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar is middle age Latika. Anil Kapoor, Irfan Khan, Mahesh Manjrekar, Saurabh Shukla and many more slum boys and girls.