Filmmaker Suvahhdan Angre gets a threat from the fringe for making a film about terrorist networks inducting children in their fight against the establishment. Do we have to push an uncomfortable story under the carpet, he asks Ramya Palisetty
With films increasingly coming under threat from the fringe, what with Padmaavat and the Malayalam film Oru Adaar love preyed upon by culture custodians, an anonymous malevolent group has now threatened the director of Billu Ustaad, which revolves around recruitment of children in terror organisations in India.
Filmmaker Suvahhdan Angre, who received the non water-marked letter by post, shows how propagandists brainwash young impressionable kids and push them towards fulfilling their agenda. The director also portrays how ATF (Anti-Terrorist Squad) officers rescue and rehabilitate his protagonist in the mainstream.
The fringe has asked Angre not to release the film, Billu Ustaad, and warned him of serious consequences if he went ahead with it. “They accused me of hurting the sentiments of a particular community when all my films are drawn from real life references. For example, my first film Aadesh mentioned Kasab as a key conspirator in the Mumbai attacks. My new film, Dreaded Gangsters, is based on Abu Salem and DIG OP Chatwal. The ones who sent the letter were of the opinion that my film was targeting a single community. I just want to clarify that we are not depicting any community in a bad light. We are developing an awareness about child terrorism, which is now a matter of international concern. But in the age of the internet, filmmakers, producers and actors are soft targets. This letter has disturbed the schedule of my film which was scheduled to be released on February 16. Everybody is scared and the concerned agencies are investigating the matter. But I am deeply heartbroken that people who haven’t even watched the film are making serious judgements. My question is, are filmmakers safe in India to make the kind of cinema they wantIJ” he asked.
The ensemble cast includes child actor Mihir Soni, Priyanshu Chatterjee, Akhilendra Mishra and Deep Raj Rana. It is an extraordinary story of a boy and his inspirational journey — from growing up in an orphanage to his battle against terrorism, saving his three friends, who are kidnapped from the orphanage by a group of terrorists and coerced to carry out their vile plans. Determined to save his friends, Billu seeks help of ATS officers.
The director is keen to convey the importance of self-defence to children. Said he, “The children’s songs, sung by Kailash Kher, are the USP of the film. It has an element of Burhan Wani, the slain militant of Kashmir, and dwells on how he was led astray. We have derived the character of Jamal from the story of Burhan Wani.”
In fact, Angre was inspired by press reports and features on Wani. Said he, “I read about Wani and how he got children into his intelligence network. This was a non-existent concept in Indian films before.”
There are various reasons why terror groups recruit naive and vulnerable children from poor backgrounds.They are easy to manipulate and have low emotional stability. Angre revealed, “When I was studying these cases, I found that children who are led into it are mostly underprivileged kids from communities having poor educational level. Moreover, their parents hand them over to renegades in exchange for money.” Angre has extensively studied the arrest of Mohammed Sirajuddin, that led to the unravelling of a big subversive network.
He insisted that he never for once had projected the religiosity of his protagonists. “Pin-pointing a particular community is unintended and entirely unnecessary when the root cause of transgressions is poverty.”
Angre has graduated from being an assistant director to a fullscale filmmaker, a transition which has made him more responsible. “Directors have to be very careful in these kind of films because there is no star cast. Content is the star of my film. I have to carry it on my own shoulders. If I go wrong, everything will backfire on me. The director is the captain of the ship. If the ship sinks, the producer and media blame it on the director and if the film works, the credit goes to the actors. But as an assistant director, you are just a casual labourer at the beck and call of the director.”
He is happy to have come into his own at a time when content-driven films are sought after. Said he, “The demand of content is so high that small budget cinemas are flourishing. A Newton made it as the Indian entry in the Oscars. That doesn’t mean that I am debunking masala films as they gave me bread and butter and I grew up watching them. They shaped my cinematic vision. It is now up to me to tell stories that are real and thought-provoking.”