Bheed is first black-and-white film in India in 16 years

- ADVERTISEMENT -

After building intrigue among the audience with black and white images reminding us of the 1947 India partition, the makers of Bheed have released a video putting speculation to rest. The pictures, which look as if they belong to the 1947 India Partition era, are actually from the 2020 India lockdown, when people were uprooted from their homes again.

12 years after the 84^th Academy Award-winning French film The Artist, Bhushan Kumar’s and Anubhav Sinha’s upcoming social drama, Bheed, is another feature film made completely in black-and-white.

Depicting the social disparity at times when borders were drawn within the country, the Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar starrer is a story of migrant workers, who were stranded without necessities, trying to find their way home in the middle of a nationwide lockdown.

Anubhav says, “Bheed is a story of the most perilous times that changed everything for humanity. The key objective of shooting the film in black-and-white was to showcase how the visuals of the social disparity during India’s lockdown were strikingly similar to what people went through during the 1947 India partition. This story is about people whose lives changed in a snap and the colors from their lives were lost when a border was drawn within the country.”

Bhushan says, “Bheed is a special film as it communicates the story of the toughest times people had to face just to reach their homes. It is a very important story and who better than Anubhav to direct it? I am glad that we are able to bring such an important story to our audiences with a unique cinematic experience.”

The film is jointly produced by Bhushan Kumar’s T-Series and Anubhav Sinha’s Benaras Mediaworks. It also features Pankaj Kapur, Ashutosh Rana, Dia Mirza, Virendra Saxena, Aditya Shrivastava, Kritika Kamra and Karan Pandit. Reliance Entertainment is the overseas distribution partners.

Anubhav Sinha, since Mulk, has been concentrating on issue-based stories, of which Article 15 and Thappad did moderately well. His last directorial was Anek. He recently produced Faraaz. Starting off as a music video maker for T-Series, he made his directorial debut with their production, Tum Bin (2001) and has directed the success Dus (2005), besides the biggie, RA. One (2011).

The last Hindi movie in black-and-white was the multiple awards-winning Frozen (2007, but released in theaters only in 2009), filmed without color as the director wanted a specific mood. Before that, after films began to be made in color, a memorable experiment was the 1972 Basu Bhattacharya hit, Anubhav.