Kolkata-based award-winning filmmaker Abhiroop Basu is all set with his new project, Gudgudi, based on real-life accounts of the 2002 Gujrat riots. The 18-minute long film is an Indo-US co-production starring Rajshri Deshpande of Sacred Games fame in the lead.
According to Basu, the recent happenings of the Delhi Riots had awakened buried memories of Gujarat in him. “Back in 2002, as most from our generation were still kids, we have very faint memories of the riots. The recent riots triggered those times as I believe a lot has been tucked away in time,” adds Basu.
When the project was in its research phase, a particular real-life account of a woman stirred Basu, which he chose to as the central theme of the short film. When asked about the unusual title of the film, Basu chose not to explain as he wants the audience to find it out themselves.
With two successful shorts up his sleeve including Pankaj Tripathi starrer Laali and Adil Hussain's Meal, Abhiroop chose a controversial topic such as the Gujrat riots this time as he believes India’s history is being rewritten every other day.
“With station names changed, significant chapters deleted off history books; we may not have anything left to answers our future generations in 30 years down the line”.
He adds, “There have been films based on the riots previously like Parzania and Firaaq which mostly focussed on the aftermath of the mishaps, but none on actual happenings. Gudgudi on the contrary would be a fictionalised take on real-life accounts. It would be a documentation of the survivors from the incident".
Produced by Irfan Hydari, Asad Kirmani from the US and Kaveri Mehrotra from India, the film also stars Akash Sinha of Gangs of Wasseypur fame and Chetan Sharma of Pagglait fame.
Keeping in mind that the movie revolves around accounts of women, Basu has also significantly tried to include a larger female crew so as to be in line with a woman’s perspective towards the occurrences.
“We plan to wrap up filming by end of this December and begin sending entries across global platforms thereafter”, concludes the Prague Film School graduate.