IT SEEMS Emraan Hashmi has read the bio of Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey many times over. The Hollywood star?s early career roles could easily ring a bell with the Tumsa Nahin Dekha and Zeher actor. After a series of romantic comedies like The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, McConaughey moved on to meatier roles in independent filmmaker Lee Daniels? Paper Boy and Mud by Jeff Nichols. Two years and four movies later, the actor stood in Hollywood?s Dolby Theatre in early March 2013, mumbling ?All right, all right, all right? in his acceptance speech for the Best Actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club. Hashmi has some distance to go before he gets to make acceptance speeches at important domestic awards, but he has certainly made his move. In fact, he made the move in 2012 in Dibakar Banerjee?s Shanghai, but not many noticed he could act as well as he could kiss. A filmmaker who found something significant in Hashmi?s acting was Anurag Kashyap. ?It was Anurag Kashyap who suggested Emraan Hashmi for Tigers when he met Danis Tanovic at a film festival,? says Guneet Monga, whose Sikhya Entertainment has co-produced the film. Tanovic took the suggestion well.
?It was a complete departure from what I have done before,? says Hashmi, who joined Tanovic for the world premiere of Tigers at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival. ?We don?t need to do much research for Bollywood films, which are full of songs, dances and kisses, but this was different.? Tigers is the real-life story of a Pakistani medical salesman, Syed Aamir Raza, who sues a multinational company he works for after discovering that the multinational?s baby food products he was selling were killing children. Raza goes on to collect evidence of corruption against the company. The representative of a London-based NGO, Baby Milk Action, joins Raza in fighting the multinational company. But in the late 1980s, Raza is forced to flee Pakistan after receiving threats to his life.
?The issue of children?s death because of baby food was important to me,? says Hashmi, who met Raza before the screening of the film in Toronto, where the former Pakistani medical salesman today drives a taxi after taking refuge in Canada with his family. ?It is the most challenging film I have done so far,? says Hashmi. ?It is based on a true story and everything had to be true to life,? adds the actor, who is keen to work in films with ?different kinds of subjects?.
In the film, Tanovic employs a narrative in which the protagonist is questioned by the filmmaker and his lawyer about the ?inaccuracies? uncovered by their research. Ayan (the name of Raza?s character in the film) goes on to narrate his story with frequent interruptions by the filmmaker and lawyer. It emerges during the interrogation that Raza had, in fact, demanded money from his former employer for burying the case. The filmmaker, however, decides to go ahead with the production to reveal the larger issue of dying children. ?We wrote the script with the aim of narrating the story within the story,? explains British scriptwriter Andy Paterson, who shares the writing credit with Tanovic. ?That way, we thought the film will be more truthful,? he adds.
After his first producer abandoned him days before shooting was to begin, Tanovic found support in Mumbai-based Indian producers Sikhya Entertainment and Cinemorphic Production. According to Sikhya Entertainment?s Monga, the film will have a different version for India. ?The Indian version will be significantly different than the international version screened at the Toronto festival,? she says, indicating there will be ?at least one Sufi song? to cater to the taste of Indian audiences.
Faizal Khan
Faizal Khan is a freelancer
