A MEART-WARMING MUG ACROSS TME BORDER

STARRIN G: Sharib Hashmi, lnnamulhaq

WRITER-DIRECTOR: Nitin Kakkar **** <).?

There is an utterly moving sequence towards the end of this lovely parable on cross-border amity where Sunny (Sharib Hashmi), who has strayed into Pakistan, confesses to Aftaab (lnnamulhaq) that he is obsessed with Bollywood and wants to be a hero, though he knows he doesn't have it in him

"Mera asli hero toh tu hi ha/;' Aftaab tells Sunny sincerely.

For me, that moment sums up the mood of this little-big film Made on a shoestring budget by fringe talent, the film shows us that true heroes can be found in the most unexpected places.

Try this hamlet in the back of the beyond in Pakistan where our Bollywood struggler is locked up by militants who actually wanted to kidnap Americans for errm negotiations.

And look what they dragged in!

Filmistaan would have been an outrageously funny film were it not for the profoundly moving underbelly that it showcases with such fluency and spontaneity. The film could have become a gallery of cliches about lndoPak harmony. A sort of Veer-Zara turned into a Veru and Zara-uddin who become friends in Pakistani soil while guns boom all around them.

Sachindra Vats edits the scenes down to the minimum when required. But generally he lets the characters develop naturally, even ifthe process takes some time. The film is shot in authentic locations by cinematographer Subhransu Das who brings to the table an enticing aura of believability.

The dialogues written by the fi l m's lead Sharib Hashmi never become top - heavy with message-mongering, nor does the going get excessively verbose as it did in the recent cross-border film Kya Di/Ii Kya Lahore.

It's astonishing how director Nitin Kakkar averts all the corny cliches of brotherhood across the barbed wire. By simply using Bollywood as the binding factor between the two countries, Kakkar emerges with a plot that is high on emotions and low on tripe and homilies.

The two actors who play the Indian and Pakistani do the rest. So effortlessly do they express the oneness of a cultural kinship that we are left looking at two individuals who are united by a shared interest. Sharib Hashmi and lnnamulhaq are driven by their sense of absolute abandon that comes only to artistes who have nothing to lose except their anonymity. They are phenomenally in character, not slipping up even once in their interactive zone.

Bollywood does the rest. There is a longish homage to Sooraj Barjatya's Maine Pyar Kiya where we see the whole Pakistani village glued to a community television set watching the Salman Khan and Bhagyashree love story. Here, as in many sim i lar scenes showing mutual Bol lywood-inspired solidarity between the two warring nations,