The movie, ‘Article 370’ is competing in the Indian Panorama section of the 55th edition of IFFI and the director Aditya Jambhale was at the festival to talk about the film. His movie had attracted a lot of attention with the banning in Gulf countries. He said, “Any film, even if it is not a political thriller, as a director or producer, I don't understand the idea behind banning a film especially in a democratic country like India. Even a film like ‘Animal’ faced a lot of comments. As filmmakers in a diverse nation, we have certain responsibilities because our work should not cause any chaos or disharmony. But in a film like ‘Article 370’ we did that perfectly, we understood our responsibilities, backed it with the facts. Yes, it was banned in the Gulf which had an impact on our sales but we did amazing business in India. It would have been great if they had not because it was not against any religion, it doesn't hurt sentiments. It just portrayed the sentiments of a country. That we did perfectly fine. But these kinds of things happen and we were prepared for this when you do a film like ‘Article 370’".
He said, “When you are shooting in Kashmir the problems are going to be huge and the challenges are how you make a film not about anything else. Technically it goes through any process a film will go through. We had to go through the censor board, we had to go through the permissions when we were shooting in hangars in Noida making the Pulwama blast look all these have to go through a certain channel, protocol which we cannot break.
It is not a big budget film. It is not going to compete with a film that is worth Rs 200 crores. Mid-budget film will always find a window for release where it does not have too much competition. Just before that ‘Fighter’ was released, after that there was ‘Shaitan’ and Ajay Devgan was in it. We had this window which we knew pretty much in advance. ‘Bade Miyan Chote Miyan’ was a big budget film. It was not a last minute decision by us. It is difficult for a production house to go ahead without a main hero to compete with these releases. It is very critical for a film like that to get a window with minimum competition and maximum advantage. That was what February 23, 2024 was".
When asked if the mood in the country being in a certain direction helped the movie, he said it was very hard to say it was in a direction because he felt there were certain things which were above everything else. A cricket match against Australia or a world Cup win in T20 was above everything else. The entire country he said would come together on such occasions.
Speaking about accessing information for the film, he said, “There were certain investigative journalists who had information but all the material was not together.” He said the incident of the white Honda city was revealed in the film and not known to the general public. He spoke to certain members of the PMO's office but most of the information was from investigative journalists. He said, “There were certain things you will not find in the local media like these 14 bills which were 200 pages, they were very detailed. It was very important for us to honour who was giving us this information. We had to understand our scope and realise what we could keep and what we had to keep out. We had gone through so much of research that we had to keep much out," he explained.
Any advice Goan filmmakers, “They have to keep hustling and it is important to keep struggling and hanging in there,” concludes Aditya.