‘Bharat Bhagya Vidhaata’ showed no terror, but courage of nurses: Manoj Tapadia said – Kangana agreed as soon as she heard the script; Left the journey of advertising and made a film

After a long journey of 27 years in the advertising world, director Manoj Tapadia has made his strong presence felt on the cinematic screen with the film ‘Bharat Bhagya Vidhaata’. The film tells the untold story of the unprecedented courage shown by the nurses and staff at Cama Hospital during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, which has not been revealed to the general public till now. After the release of the film, Manoj Tapadia shared many interesting experiences related to its production, working with Kangana Ranaut and deep research of the film. Got the idea from a news article, brought the courage on screen Manoj Tapadia considers himself a filmmaker of realism. He says that the idea of ​​this film did not come from any imaginary story, but from a real incident. He himself was in Mumbai during the 26/11 attacks. Some time after the attack, he read a small news related to Cama Hospital, which touched his heart. In the film, priority has been given to human emotions rather than the fear of terror. Manoj explains: “My aim was not just to show the terrorist attack or the echo of the bullets, but I wanted to show the mental stress and experience of the people present inside the hospital that night. If I had shown only the attack, it would have remained an incident, but when the audience connects with the pain of the characters, the film touches the heart directly.” What shocked Manoj the most in this entire incident was the unarmed courage of the nurses. Women who did not even have a stick for self-defense, risked their lives and saved hundreds of patients safely. If they wanted, they could have run away through the back door, but they stood firm. This is the real soul of this film, which has been presented on screen from the nurses’ perspective. Story written without thinking of the star, Kangana’s sharp script sense. Manoj has a strict rule about writing films, he never writes the script keeping any star in mind. He believes that first the story and dialogues should be completely prepared, only then the right actors should be selected for the characters. If a star is thought to be written and he refuses, the entire story gets affected. Even while writing ‘Bharat Bhagya Vidhaata’, he did not have any name in his mind. When the script was completed, the story reached Kangana Ranaut through casting director Mukesh Chhabra. According to Manoj, he never thought that he would be able to reach Kangana so easily. But Kangana’s script sense is very sharp; As soon as he heard the story, he understood its vision and immediately agreed to the film. After Kangana’s arrival, the scale of the film increased and producers Shailesh Singh and Jayantilal Gada also joined the project. Everyone on the set had the freedom to give suggestions, which helped in improving the scenes. Authenticity based on 5-hour interviews and court documents Making a film on a real and sensitive historical event was a big challenge, for which detailed research was done. Interestingly, Manoj himself did not meet the victims directly. Instead, his team recorded interviews with real characters with the help of people with journalism backgrounds. The writing team carefully watched about 5 hours of video and audio material over the course of months. The aim of the research was not just to collect dry data, but to understand the expressions and human side of the victims. To maintain authenticity, police records, court documents and the original layout of the hospital were studied closely. The result of this deep research is that the local terminology used in the film and the behavior of the nurses appear completely real. The hard work of 100 drafts and responses to critics made the film’s scripting process extremely intensive. Even though the initial writing was completed in two months, Manoj kept making changes to it until the dubbing of the film was finished. For this reason, about 100 drafts of the script were prepared until it was finalized. As technically simple as this film looks, it was very complex to shoot. It was challenging to coordinate with around 70 lead and supporting cast in the limited space of the hospital. Due to budget and limited resources, the entire team completed the shooting in a tight schedule of just 35 days. After the release of the film, some critics said that it did not capture the broader atmosphere of 26/11 Mumbai. Manoj expressed his view very clearly on this. He said that his intention was never to show the entire Mumbai attack; His focus was only to convey to the audience the mental state of the nurses present inside Cama Hospital and the tension of that night. Talking about his future vision, Manoj said that in the future also he wants to make such films which not only entertain the audience but also force them to think.



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