'Chittagong': A story of ordinary people's victory

Bedabrata Pain believes in exploring new terrains of life. He quit the lucrative job of NASA scientist to try his hands in filmmaking and decided to make debut as a director with what many would have considered very unusual--a period drama on the 1930 Chittagong Uprising.

His film "Chittagong", which hits the screens on October 12, is going to be an entirely different take on "one of the glorious chapters" of India's freedom struggle, a take that goes beyond focusing on iconic heroes and drives home the point that ordinary people can script a victory, Pain said in an interview.

He wanted to move away from the usual trend of most of the films on Chittagong Uprising ending in defeat and hanging of 'Masterda' Sujra Sen because he believes the Chittagong Uprising is "a story of victory". That is why Pain has chosen a teenaged boy, Jhunku Roy, who took part in that uprising, to be the protagonist who achieves victory of a "reluctant hero".

Pain is unfazed by the fact that an earlier film on the Chittagong Uprising "Kheley Hain Hum Jee Jaan Sey", directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, had bombed at the box office more than a year ago even though it had the star power in the form of Abhishek Bachchan and Deepika Padukone.

The only star value of Pain's film, shot in a West Bengal village resembling Chittagong in Bangladesh, is the presence of Manoj Bajpayee. But the director takes a lot of heart from the success of films like "Kahaani", "Paan Singh Tomar", "Gangs of Wasseypur" and "Shanghai" and thinks "Chittagong" is part of this "new wave" of films and "would stand on its own feet".

The music is composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and the lyrics are by Prasoon Joshi. Most of the songs, according to the director, are raga-based.

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