On 29 September, the trailer for Prahaar will be launched at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in Mumbai. Not a multiplex, not a five-star ballroom, not a mall atrium. A working railway station, and specifically the one where 52 people were killed on the night of 26 November 2008.
It is, by every account, the first time a film event of this kind has been held at CSMT. Reported by Free Press Journal, Bollywood Hungama and NewsBytes.
The Film
Prahaar is a courtroom drama built around public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam and the prosecution of Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker taken alive.
Rajkummar Rao plays Nikam. Wamiqa Gabbi co-stars. Lalit Prabhakar plays Kasab.
The film releases on 16 October, over the Dussehra weekend. It was originally scheduled for August and moved.
Why The Venue Is The Decision Worth Examining
Set aside whether you find it tasteful for a moment and look at what it actually achieves, because both readings are available and both are honest.
The defensible version. A film about the legal aftermath of 26/11 launching at a site of 26/11 is thematically coherent rather than arbitrary. The station is a public space. It is also a memorial in practice if not in designation, with a plaque and a daily flow of commuters who walk past the spot without stopping. Holding an event there insists on the connection between the event and the place, which is what the film is arguing for in the first place.
The uncomfortable version. A trailer launch is a marketing event. Its purpose is to generate coverage. Choosing the site of a mass killing as your backdrop generates a specific kind of coverage, and the word “first-ever” is doing a lot of work in every headline about it, including in the press release that produced those headlines.
Both of those things are true at the same time, and the industry’s usual move is to pretend only the first one is.
What Will Actually Decide It
Not the venue. The execution.
If the event is sombre, short, gives the space to the people who were there and to Nikam himself, and does not feature a step-and-repeat banner with a sponsor logo, it will read as a considered piece of commemoration.
If there is a red carpet, a hype reel, a DJ, or anyone described as looking “stunning” in the resulting photo gallery, it will read as exactly what its critics will say it is.
Indian film marketing does not have a strong record at this specific distinction. Events at sensitive locations have historically drifted toward the promotional register within about twenty minutes of starting, because the people running them are event managers and the incentive is engagement.
The Subject Deserves Better Than A Gimmick
The Nikam prosecution is genuinely underexplored material. Almost every 26/11 dramatisation has gone to the attack itself, which is the easier film: siege, corridors, tension, resolution.
The trial is harder and more interesting. A capital prosecution conducted inside a functioning legal system, with a defendant who was guaranteed representation, under enormous public pressure to skip the process entirely. The argument of a courtroom film about 26/11 is that due process held when it would have been popular to abandon it. That is a substantial thing to put on screen.
Rajkummar Rao is also, on paper, correct casting. He is at his best playing men who are ordinary until the situation stops being ordinary, and a public prosecutor is a civil servant before he is a hero.
The Date Change Nobody Explained
Worth flagging. This film was an August release and it is now a 16 October release, and no public reason has been given. Dussehra weekend is a considerably more valuable window than a dead August Friday, so the commercial logic is obvious, but a film positioning itself as a serious treatment of a national trauma moving to the biggest available holiday slot is a decision with two readings, the same as the venue.
Bengaluru Baath Take
We are not going to call this distasteful before it has happened, because the idea is genuinely defensible and the film’s subject earns some latitude.
But the bar is high and it is set by the venue, not by the makers. You do not get to hold a marketing event at CSMT and then run the standard playbook. No paparazzi wall. No outfit coverage. No one saying the word “blockbuster” within a hundred metres of platform 13.
Get it right and it is the most interesting film event of the year. Get it wrong and it is the most cynical, and everybody will remember which.
We will be watching on the 29th.
Sources
- Free Press Journal, venue, date, cast, subject and release date
- Bollywood Hungama, first-ever film event at CSMT
- NewsBytes, event details
