by S Venkat Narayan
NEW DELHI, August 6: Bollywood star John Abraham has refuted rumours that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa secretly invested in his upcoming political spy-thriller Madras Cafe.
Talking to reporters in Chennai, Abraham said: “It’s not true that President Rajapaksa secretly financed my film. Viacom 18 Motion Pictures is the producer of my film. They would feel bad about these rumours. Therefore, I’m clarifying again that it has not been secretly financed by anyone other than my producers.”
“We have been very logical about our budget. We have kept the budget very low. We have not been extravagant with the budget. Our agenda was to tell a story and we have concentrated on only that,” he added.
The actor plays the role of Captain Vikram Singh, an Indian intelligence official working for Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), who is sent to Sri Lanka on a secret mission during the Indian Peace-Keeping Force’s (IPKF) operations in the island’s NorthEast against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the late 1990s.
It is a fictionalised account of events about a covert operation conducted in the Jaffna peninsula. A fast-paced political thriller set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war, the film was shot extensively in the jungles of Kerala, where the landscape looks similar to that of the Jaffna peninsula, and Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh in north India.
Its Hindi and Tamil versions are scheduled for simultaneous release on August 23.
The film’s makers are talking to distributors in Sri Lanka for its release in the island. It is not clear if the film will be released in Sri Lanka too on August 23.
Madras Cafe has been directed by Shoojit Sircar, whose last film Vicky Donor became a box office hit and won him a national award.
The film also features Nargis Fakhri, Prosenjit Chaterjee and Rashi Khanna in important role. Fakhri, a model born in New York whose father is Pakistani mother Czech, plays the role of a journalist.
Last month, pro-Tamil outfit Naam Thamizhar (We Tamilians) founder Seeman had sought a ban on the movie by claiming that it has portrayed LTTE in bad light. Asked about this charge, Abraham said: “We haven’t showed anyone as terrorists, we have tried our best to show both the sides of the coin and we stuck to the story.”
Director Sircar, a Bengali, said: “Please don’t speculate on the film. I’m a conscientious film-maker and I know the sensitivity of the problem. I request people to see the film first before speculating.”
COURTESY:THE ISLAND