Meghna Gulzar, who made last year’s crime thriller Talvar, will next be making an espionage thriller with the 1971 Indo Pak War as it’s backdrop. The film will be based on Harinder Sikka’s book ‘Calling Sehmat’, which is centered around a Kashmiri woman married to a Pakistani army officer. She then provides the Indian Intelligence valuable information during the 1971 Indo-Pak war and almost single-handedly foils Pakistan’s war plans. The film is expected to go on floors by mid next year.
The film will be produced by Junglee Pictures who approached Meghna to direct the story almost 2 years ago, but the talks fell through. Later, another production house initiated talks for the adaptation with Meghna again. “It was a tad serendipitous and I happily took it on but again things didn’t close with that production house. By that time I had developed a personal rapport with the author because of frequent interactions and I suggested we go back to Priti and Junglee Pictures. And I’m glad we’re back together because there’s no better way to complete the circle Talvar opened. What makes it all the more surreal is that when the book came out, the author had come to my father, Gulzar, asking him to direct it. It’s like I have a karmic connection with the story,” said the director.
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Meghna Gulzar pointed out that even though the protagonist is a woman, the story is so large in its implications that gender becomes inconsequential. “Historically,” she admits, “there’ve been stories about honey traps, but this one goes far beyond because it is an intense, personal story of a girl who operated, on one level, as a spy, wife, daughter and patriot, and, on another level, the decisions she took, out of choice or for the love of her family and her country, impact her life and her as a woman, emotionally and psychologically.”
Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar, starring Irrfan Khan, Konkona Sen Sharma, and Neeraj Kabi was based on the 2008 Noida double murder case, in which a teenage girl and her family servant were found murdered, and her parents were convicted for the crime.
Feature image source: Desimartini.com