Shoojit Sircar’s Sardar Uddham, which was released last year straight on OTT, received a lot of critical acclaim. Vicky Kaushal’s portrayal of the later revolutionary freedom fighter left everyone impressed.
The film, which revolves around the life of the late revolutionary freedom fighter Sardar Udham Singh, who assassinated the lieutenant governor of Punjab at the time of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, Michael O’Dwyer, is now the only Hindi film to be selected for the Tiantan Award at the 12th Beijing International Film Festival.
Elated with the nomination, Sircar says, “It’s incredibly an honour for our entire team that Sardar Udham has been officially nominated under Beijing International Film Festival. I never imagined that this film would be in a film festival. Definitely somewhere possibly we were right in making the film on revolutionary Sardar Udham Singh. There was not much available in terms of his life story. Whatever we could gather from his investigation, post the assassination. So it is very important that the world should be aware of our history too in that sense it’s really an honour for the entire Sardar Udham crew.”
Tiantan Award is the official competition section of BJIFF. It aims to discover and present recent outstanding films from across the globe and encourage diversity in the film industry. Tiantan Award each year comprises a maximum of 17 full-length feature films.
The Piku director who has often spoken about how he waited for almost two decades to make the film and invested almost five years, feels that the nomination is a validation for the long wait. “This surely validates our patience that we waited for so long to make this film and also make this film the way we think a revolutionary should be presented that was very important to me. I could manage Udham Singh and Bhagat Singh together in a film that was very important for me. How they lived what they thought they were just normal young boys. The second most thing I was able to do was possibly as close as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. That massacre had disturbed me for a very long time, I couldn’t get over it when I visited Jallianwala Bagh for the very first time.”
The film is produced by Rising Sun Pictures which is jointly run by Sircar and his partner Ronnie Lahiri. Lahiri adds, “It’s a pleasure to be selected at the Beijing International Film Festival. We are officially selected under Tiantan Awards and we are the only Hindi film which has been selected from India among 16 films from around the world. We are glad that the story which we wanted to tell the world, has been noticed by the world.”
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