Anant Mahadevan, whose movie, Red Alert-The War Within on Naxalism is being premiered at International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2009 here, said that the story read by him in a newspaper inspired him to work on the subject.
"Actually I was inspired by a true story that appeared in Hindustan Times in Mumbai about a farmer who got inadvertently trapped in a group of naxalites,” Mahadevan told PTI.
He said that the film starring Suniel Shetty, Naseeruddin Shah, Sameera Reddy, Seema Biswas is a great human story to be told.
“Naxalism only happens to be a backdrop and very relevant backdrop at the moment. It was a story of a person who is affected by the moment,” he explained.
Mahadevan, who has seven films as a director under his belt, stated that it was just a coincident that a film on Naxalism was produced when the movement is at its height in the country.
“The movement is suddenly in uprising again. It had died down in between. It’s a 40-year old problem and now everyone is running after it,” he quipped adding that he is not the sympathiser of the issue but has reported it through the film.
“There are two sides to the coin. If you see how the whole thing started, it definitely began because of the apathy of the government towards the people who were denied a lot of rights but when the uprising started, it started from rich middle class than it got picked up by the leaders,” he explained.
Speaking about his choice of Suniel Shetty as a lead actor who played the role of Narsimha, Mahadevan said that it was looks that actually mattered. “He looked like Andhra Pradesh farmer and he is from the South too, so half my battle in casting was over,” he explained.
The director felt that being a human story anybody who is moved by the film and moved by issue would surely like to watch the film whether he is in the city or small towns.
He said that the censor board did not clipped a single frame from the movie before giving it `A’ certificate.
“It's an honest film. I have not made the film which is catering to typical Hindi film formula. It’s a very-very far remote from that. This is very uncompromising film,” he added.
