Celebrated Indian film director Shyam Benegal has expressed surprise at reactions on social media regarding a trailer of ‘Mujib: The Making of a Nation’, a biographical film on Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The trailer of ‘Mujib - The Making of a Nation' was released at Festival de Cannes on Thursday. The film, directed by Shyam Benegal, is expected to be ready by the end of 2022.
The filmmaker said the presentation in Cannes (where the trailer was launched) went off very well he said when he was contacted on Saturday, according to The Telegraph.
The director says it is very difficult for him to guess why audiences from Bangladesh are upset as all actors are Bangladeshis.
Benegal said he was in Dhaka shooting the film and the entire cast was from Bangladesh. “Their pronunciation of some words is different from the Bengali spoken in West Bengal and they pride themselves on their Bengali. All of that is there in the film. That is why I had taken only Bangladesh actors as they would feel much closer to Mujib,” he said.
Shyam Benegal had made another film on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, titled Bose: The Forgotten Hero. He faced legal battle after the release of the film as the film had shown Bose getting married (to Emily Schenkl)¸which some people had taken to be incorrect and disrespectful.
But in Mujib’s case, Benegal said he had not foreseen any controversy coming.
The film’s trailer describes him as a “devoted family man” and has some scenes of him interacting with family members. “Bose had left Bengal and went far away from his original family. But Mujib wasn’t alienated from his family. He was very much there except for the period when he was put in prison and taken away to West Pakistan. That’s why I would like to know myself what it (the negative reaction) is about.”
Benegal pointed out that people had not seen the film yet. “You cannot pass a comment on a film by seeing a 90-second trailer. You can comment on just the trailer,” he said.
