Ramchand Pakistani
by baiscope wallahNandita Das is the most beautiful actor in Indian cinema. Well, may be she’s got some competition now. She gives yet another heart warming performance in this Pakistani film based on true events, highlighting the plight of innocent people caught on the wrong side of the contentious border between India and Pakistan.
An ironical twist is that the family caught in this web is a Hindu dalit family living on the Pakistani side of the fence:
The singular theme of the film is how a child from Pakistan aged eight years learns to cope with the trauma of forced separation from his mother (Nandita Das) while being held prisoner, along with his father in the jail of a country i.e. India, which is hostile to his own, while on the other side of the border, the wife-mother, devastated by their sudden disappearance builds a new chapter of her life, by her solitary struggle for sheer survival.
The performance of Syed Fazal Hussain as the young Ramchand is one of the joys of the film. Director Mehreen Jabbar’s debut film has a handmade quality to it, little rough at the edges, which works to its advantage. The manufactured sterility of Hollywood or heightened melodrama of Bollywood would have failed the honesty of the subject.
Mehreen Jabbar wanted this to be a cross-border collaboration, and was easily able to rope in Nandita Das to play the lead role (evidentally, she is the first Indian actor to obtain permission to shoot in Pakistan!). The other Indian contributers include music director Debajyoti Mishra and singer Shobha Mudgal. Mehreen was surprised by the co-operation of the police at the Indian jail in Bhuj, where she conducted her research, and also support of the Indian minister Mani Shankar Aiyer.
The film was lauded by the South Asian community in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival 2008.