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29 March 2024

Ramu’s take on Mumbai attacks

Published
By Sanskriti Media/ Manash Karnad

Ram Gopal Varma is ready to strike back with his most emotional film to date - The Attacks of 26/11. Ramu unveiled the trailor of his film on Thursday. Its first impact was stunning. The trailor revealed Nana Patekar as a super cop – a joint commissioner – who is in front of an enquiry commission answering questions about the performance of the cops during the 26/11 attacks.

Nana was not present for the event and when asked about it, Ramu had his answers ready. “He has already spoken about whatever he wanted to in the character that he has played in the film,” he replied very intelligently sidestepping the query to why Nana was not promoting the film that releases on March 1.

Ramu also explained that his film had a lot of emotional content in it. “The film is more of an emotional journey of the characters. I am looking at the film from the eyes of the eye witnesses. Be it the nine year old girl who witnessed the CST firing or the police who were present during the time of the crime. This is probably the only time when a huge crime of this nature was hapepening and the police had a chance to fight it then. The film is based on the eyewitness accounts, what we got during the interrogation and the police reports,” says Varma about his film.

Varma also explained that the owner of the Leopold Restaurant was so good in the way he narrated the accounts of what happened in his restaurant that night that he preferred to let him narrate the incident on his own and made him play his own character on screen. Thus the only man who plays himself in The Attacks of 26/11 is the owner of Leopold Farzad Jehani. “He was on the first level when the attacks started and then he gave his version which I have used in the film,” says Ramu.

The filmmaker has restricted the film to the night of the attacks on 26/11 and the film is more of a four hour journey of the attack from 9 pm to 1 am when Kasab was caught. The Attacks of 26/11 will end with the hanging of Kasab – a sequence that was added in the film after the accused in the 26/11 attacks was convicted and then confined to the noose.

Ramu had earlier denied wanting to make a film on the 26/11 attacks, but then made the film after producer Parag Sanghavi from Alumbra Entertainment convinced him to make the film. When asked if he wanted to make a film on the Delhi rape case, Ramu denied that he wanted to make a film at that moment, “but I do not know what will happen an hour later,” says the maverick director clearly indicating that he would follow his heart when it came to making his movies.