Armed Forces Veterans Day | ‘A documentary on the untold stories of war veterans was befitting’: Ananth Mahadevan

Ananth Mahadevan

Ahead of the 7th Armed Forces Veterans Day, on January 14, National Film Award-winning screenwriter-director Ananth Mahadevan announced his Veterans Of War — The India Story. It is a 75-minute documentary film that celebrates 75 years of Indian independence and will feature real-life stories and interviews of Indian armed forces Gallantry awardees.

Written and directed by Mahadevan and produced by Ashvin Gidwani, this documentary stemmed from an idea to do a film on the Indian Navy. Talking exclusively to us about the film Mahadevan says, “The untold stories of war veterans do not deserve to be forgotten or go unsung. Thanks to Commander Vijay Vadhera, I got access to veterans who wouldn’t have, under normal circumstances opened up. He was resourceful in requesting about 30 veterans from all over India to go live on our cameras and narrate one of the most unforgettable moments or events in their lives."

"The stories that emerged were awe-inspiring and we could see an unprecedented documentary in the making. It was a hitherto unexplored cinematic territory and was befitting the occasion of the 75th year of India’s independence. And then a veteran’s son, Ashvin Gidwani, an accomplished theatre and media person jumps in to produce the film as a tribute. Both Federal Bank and Transworld too saw a noble opportunity and associated themselves with the project.”

‘OTT can never replace the joy of a big screen experience’

Mahadevan has the experience of working on all formats of entertainment, including television, theatre, OTT and films and he believes that the rise of OTT will never be a competition for the silver screen.

“The OTT, or rather digital platforms as I prefer calling them, are offshoots of bad television and bad programming on the small screen. The digital platforms had more areas to explore and in a limited format that spared the viewer the burden of insufferably long soaps. But these platforms, though now flushed with cinema-scale budgets can never replace the joy of a big-screen experience. It is a transition time. Just like theatre was threatened by cinema, which in turn was threatened by videos. Even radio was on the verge of a wipe-out by bludgeoning technology. Yet, all of them co-exist now. We need to make our subjects more visually appealing to sustain in cinemas. The formats of digital screens and cinema screens are different.”

‘Sadly most of our audience still remains cinema illiterate’

While our audience of all the different mediums of entertainment has changed over the years Mahadevan feels that most are not very aware when it comes to cinema. “We do have a slightly wider audience for new attempts in content and form, but, sadly, most of our audience still remains cinema-illiterate. The blame is solely on the pedestrian potboilers dished out in the name of commercial cinema. When the audience has no choice, they remain drugged into watching mediocrity and neither their taste nor the quality of cinema improves. It is unfortunate that in India, cinema is treated as a commodity and not as a cerebral creation.”

‘World cinema has grown by leaps and bounds, we still wallow in mediocrity’

As a filmmaker and screenwriter, what does he think is the most important thing that the industry needs today? Mahadevan says, “We, sadly, lack minds that dare to think out of the box. While world cinema has grown by leaps and bounds, we still wallow in mediocrity without giving a hearing to innovative concepts and makers. The fear of the box-office performance has paralysed our corporate heads forcing them to play safe or, at best, churn out the curate’s egg.

‘I fought hard to make the films I wished to make’

Mahadevan has made films like the Marathi movie Mee Sindhutai Sapkal (2010), which bagged four National Film Awards in 2011. “My self-education in the arts while being graduated in the sciences stood me in good stead. Years of watching films by masters from all over the world made me determined to shed the skin of popular cinema’s formula and emulate the great names like Satyajit Ray, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, (Francois) Truffaut, (Vittorio) de Sica, (Federico) Fellini, (Akira) Kurosawa, Andrej Wajda , and so many others. I fought hard to make the films I wished to make. The result was (Marathi) films like Mee Sindhutai Sapkal, Gour Hari Dastaan (2015), Doctor Rakhmabai (2016), Mai Ghat: Crime No. 103/2005 (2019), Bittersweet (2020), The Storyteller (2022) and, my latest, It’s Time to Go. Each one of them was an attempt to speak a global cinema language and raise the bar. The constant effort to take on subjects that challenge me and have an international appeal keeps me going.”

Talking about his career, he says, “I stand at a very crucial point of my career. Watching the incredible concepts attempted in several countries much smaller than us and our film industry (Iran is a great example, with Asghar Farhadi at the helm today), I am desperately hoping that I would get funders who would back the kind of films I would not be allowed to make. When I see international cinema that is light years ahead of us, I realise how much more is to be done for me to be taken seriously as a filmmaker of substance. I have left all my initial ventures like Dil Vil Pyar Vyar (2002), Dil Maange More (2004) and Aksar (2006) far behind me. They were the beginning for gaining a foothold in the industry. My goal was world cinema.”