| Early next month Ketan Mehta's The Rising will open the Locarno Film Festival, making it the first ever Hindi film to open an international festival in Europe or America. Locarno has grown constantly over the last two decades, establishing itself as Europe's fourth-ranking international event. It may be a co-incident but the last film that reached Locarno was also an Aamir Khan-starrer, Lagaan. The film was screened in the Piazza Granade section in 2001. The response was excellent and Lagaan went on to bag the popular 'Prix Du Public'. |
| Producer Sandeep Singh 'Bobby' Bedi has high expectations from The Rising. "I expect it to get mainstream release in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. A special US edit release will make it the most widely released Indian film ever," he says. |
| The film's English version may not be released immediately as it is getting offers from festivals in North America. The Hindi film will be launched on August 12 with a thousand prints, 600 for India and 400 for the overseas territories. |
| For the Indian film industry, The Rising's Locarno screening may just be the beginning of a rewarding international journey. The global film fraternity has been waiting for an Indian film that can be seen across the world. And if the international hype surrounding The Rising is anything to go by, it may just be that breakthrough film. |
| Royal hype |
| Sample the kind of hype the film producers have managed to create in the overseas market. For starters, the clapboard for The Rising's first shot was snapped by none other than Prince Charles. The sets were created at a five -star hotel in Mumbai where the royal guest spent 20 minutes watching Aamir Khan enact his scene. |
| For a further insight into the interest the project has generated internationally, cut to the Cannes festival held earlier this year. On the morning of May 17, Siddhartha Bhargava and Pooja Bedi of Kaleidoscope Entertainment (the company that is producing the film) found themselves in a tight spot. The word got around that there would be a "buyers only" screening of The Rising. Eager to see the film, an unusually large number of uninvited guests reached the venue. Bhargava had a tough time escorting the invitees into the packed screening room. Sitting in the audience at the back of the hall, I could see that the place was swarming with major international buyers, heads of film festivals and leading Hollywood executives. |
| Bobby Bedi introduced the film and for the next couple of hours an international film audience watched a little known facet of Indian history unfold before their eyes. |
| Produced at the cost of over US$ 10 million, The Rising is a costume drama based on the first war of Independence set in Barrackpore of 1857. The Hindu and Muslim soldiers revolted against the British East India Company over the use of cartridges greased with animal fat forbidden by their religions. |
| The story revolves around the Indian rebel Mangal Pandey and his friendship with a British commanding officer. The film is breathtakingly shot and imaginatively executed. |
| Jointly produced by Bedi and Deepa Sahi, The Rising boasts of talented actors "" Aamir Khan, Rani Mukherji, Amisha Patel, Toby Stephens (of Die Another Day fame) and Kirron Kher. The creative team, led by director Mehta, includes writer Farrukh Dondhy, lyricist Javed Akhtar, cinematographer Himman Dhamija and music composer A R Rehman. |
| Ketan Mehta had been wanting to direct this epic for a while and he had first approached Amitabh Bachchan to play the central character. However, finally Aamir Khan was approached for the role. |
| International stage |
| Producing ambitious films in India is no mean task. But the soft-spoken producer Bobby Bedi is an old hand at taking up challenges. He was ahead of the curve when he identified an international market for Indian products and created In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, Electric Moon, Bandit Queen and, more recently, American Daylight. |
| Bedi has been rightly credited with giving the Indian film industry an international and a corporate dimension. He has lent his name to the trade activities of the Indian film industry at international festivals and markets. His company chose to connect Indian cinema with the world by locking up international sales in advance with the London-based Capitol Pictures. Against this backdrop, it remains to be seen if The Rising can rise to the occasion and light up the national and international screens. |
| (The writer is the President and CEO of Lall Entertainment and can be contacted at lallentertainment@hotmail.com) |
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