Kabir Khan high on history this year with 'The Forgotten Army', Ranveer Singh-starrer '83'
Filmmaker Kabir Khan who is known for hits such as Ek Tha Tiger and Bajrangi Bhaijaan has his hands full this year with two ambitious projects which will recreate history on screen. He is jumping on to the digital space with his debut web series The Forgotten Army for Amazon Prime Video which is based on his 1999 documentary of the same title. The show revolves around Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA). But his biggest project is the movie ’83 which is based on the historic 1983 World Cup that the Indian cricket team won.
On the Ranveer Singhstarrer movie, Khan says, “The film is shaping up well and I am thrilled to be doing it. I am blessed that I have two big projects and they are both interesting and lovely stories. The web series has stayed with me for a long time. I have been working on it for the last 20 years and I am very thrilled that it’s finally being made. I just hope that both my projects will receive the same kind of love that the audiences have given to all my films,” says Khan.
It all started when at the age of 25 Khan got an opportunity to make a documentary. “I took two survivors: Lakshmi Sehgal, Rani of Jhansi regiment commander, and Deepak Singh Dhillon. They were both 86 at that time. I drove back for three months from Singapore through Burma and back to India retracing the roots of Azad Hind Fauj in World War II. History was narrated to me by people who made that history. That documentary was very famous. It left an impact on me. It stayed with me and I felt that I should make it for a wider audience. Documentaries usually attract a niche crowd,” he says.
But shooting for the documentary The Forgotten Army in 1999 was an arduous task. “The problems were humungous. I was shooting in Burma and there was political turmoil as well as student revolt. They arrested us under the military regime and kept us under house arrest for two weeks. We had to tell them that we were shooting for Azad Hind and then they gave us permissions but despite that the intelligence kept tracking us,” Khan reminisces and adds,
“This time the only problem I faced were logistical in nature. It’s a true story so we wanted authentic locations. We cannot shoot in Burma, as there are political problems. We recreated locations in Thailand. The Irawati river is in Burma so we shot in the river Kwai in Thailand. We shot some scenes on the Burma and Thailand border as well.”
The director goes on to clarify that ’83 is not a biopic on former cricketer Kapil Dev as it has been reported. “It’s about a bunch of boys and is a classic underdog story.
I call them boys because they were in an age group of 21 to 24. Kapil Dev was 24 and Krishnamachari Srikkanth was just 21. We won the World Cup when people did not believe in the team. No journalists wanted to cover the story. Doordarshan and All India Radio did not even cover it. Everyone had resigned to the fact that India would lose the game. Newspapers in London had reported that India should not be invited as they will bring down the level of the game as they cannot play one day international cricket. Racism was at its peak then,” he ends.