4 years after the havoc Deshmukh gives us ‘Tum Mile’

July 26,2005,rang an ominous bell for most Mumbaikars with a cloudburst and high tide wreaking havoc in the city. Four years later,filmmaker Kunal Deshmukh has set this as a background of his next venture. “Recreating the floods that happened four years ago was the biggest challenge because there would obviously be comparisons drawn to what happened in 2005 and people would snap back if portrayed wrongly.” While the love story between Soha Ali Khan and Emraan Hashmi is a fictitious one,Deshmukh did speak to people from around Mumbai who were caught in this ghastly incident. “With the media showing footage of the floods quite regularly,it was easier for me recreate the scenario and also relate to the people,although a long time has passed after the floods.”

Paan Singh Tomar

A true epic journey of a talented athelete who turned into a rebel,Paan Singh Tomar will soon make it to the big screen. “Paan Singh,a national steeplechase champion,was the man who left the Army — where he was in the Rajputana Rifles — and the track,became a dacoit and wreaked havoc in the Chambal Valley,” says director Tigmanshu Dhulia. All this,after he had created the national steeplechase record in the 1958 National Games in Cuttack with a timing of 9 minutes and 12.4 seconds and broke his own record in the 1964 Open Meet at the Karnail Singh Stadium in Delhi with a timing of 9 minutes and 4 seconds. “The challenge was in getting the facts,costumes and location right,” says Dhulia. “There is very little profiling of Paan Singh in history books. So we had to build on the character based on these minimal facts.”

Accident on Hill Road

The movie takes its premise from the real-life incident of a woman who hit a man,then drove home and parked the car in the garage with the man wedged halfway through her windshield. How difficult was it to research for this darkly humorous psychological thriller? Mahesh Nair says,“It was difficult because this incident happened in the States. We had to go through the newspaper cuttings and other research material and then adapt it accordingly to Mumbai’s scenario,” he says. The film also takes references from the alleged Salman Khan hit-and-run case and also that of Alistair Pereira. “With films based on reality,one has to be true to life and not larger than life. Secondly,one needs to be practical enough to not add song,dance and dream sequences in movies such as these.”

Red Alert – The War Within

THIS is the true story of Narsimha,a farm labourer,who desperately needed money to fund the education of his children. He finds himself in the midst of Naxalites where his mission becomes a mere subset of a greater cause that the militant’s pursue. “From being a cook to training in weapons to being involved in shootouts and kidnapping,Narsimha himself is in the thick of things and this had to be portrayed on screen in a limited time-frame,” says Ananth Mahadevan,the director who had to be extra careful with the facts since he is dealing with the sensitive issue of Naxalites. Also,when the cast and crew landed at the Tirupati forests to shoot,they realised that they were filled with Naxalites. “We then shot in the forests of Khandala which were a replica of Tirupati.”