Filmmaker Gurvinder Singh is not new to international acclaim. His is among the rare filmographies in Indian cinema, in which each title has been to one international film festival or another. A prestigious addition to it now is Rehmat, headlined by Naseeruddin Shah, which will have its world première at the 79th Locarno Film Festival.
Gurvinder Singh
An avid reader of famed Punjabi writer Ajeet Cour’s works, Singh wove four of her stories to create Rehmat, a drama set in present-day Punjab. The director also incorporated the theme of Partition — something that was not present in the original stories. “In one of her stories, a migrant goes looking for his old haveli in his ancestral village. I imagined that person to be a Muslim, who was forced to leave Punjab during Partition. That gave rise to a completely new interpretation,” shared Singh.
(L-R) Diljit Dosanjh with Naseeruddin Shah in ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’
As soon as the story took shape, the director thought of Shah to lead it. It took only a phone call for the veteran actor to give his nod to the film. Singh recalled, “Nobody could do this better than Naseer. He said, ‘Gurvinder, I don’t even need to read your script. I am doing this film.’”
Interestingly, Shah has two back-to-back films — Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga and Rehmat — based on India’s Partition. Singh revealed that Shah shot both films simultaneously. “Partition is the only commonality between the two films,” he insisted, adding that in Rehmat, the actor plays a man who returns to a village that has gone through two tragedies. “The Muslims were forced to migrate in the Partition, and the Hindus were forced to migrate during the 1980’s militancy. In Rehmat, I’m talking about how a multi-religious space like Punjab has been shorn of its multiplicity.”
Aug 6When ‘Rehmat’ will première at the Locarno Film Festival
