Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, who the led the Indian Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, is a modern day legend. And now his tale will be told onscreen by that sensitive and most competent filmmaker, Meghna Gulzar.
Fresh from the success of her Alia Bhatt starrer Raazi, which has won critical acclaim and box office success, Meghna is deep into prep for her upcoming biopic. To be produced by Ronnie Screwvala, the film will encapsulate the life and times of Field Marshal Maneckshaw, whose military career spanned four decades and five wars.
Meghna sounds both excited and overawed by the task at hand, as she says, “It’s bitter-sweet, moving from one film to the next, but it’s always a pleasure to tell a story that has grabbed your attention instinctively. The life that the Field Marshal has lived is vast and rich so it’s quite daunting to be able to do justice to it in two hours on celluloid.
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Ronnie approached me sometime in 2015 saying that he wanted to work with me and I felt flattered because I look up to his work. We didn’t even have a subject back then but over conversations, the idea of a film on Sam Manekshaw came up. I leapt at the idea.”
Research for the biopic has been in progress for a year, given the subject’s exhaustive nature. It is in the early stages of writing now, as Meghna reveals that she only started internalizing the material when Raazi was going into post-production. “The film requires tremendous prep. One part of the film will be set in the era of the ’71 war which is fairly familiar for me right now (given that Raazi was set in the 1970s as well) but otherwise, it’s a whole new world.”
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