![]() Director Raja Krishna Menon took care that the mass appeal of the film and the seriousness of the subject didn’t interfere with each other and the result was an engaging film with immense historical and cultural value. Thanks to the film a generation of Indians took notice and felt pride of an event which would have otherwise gotten lost in general knowledge books and archived newspapers. It is a perfect example of how cinema can contribute to the highlighting of unsung heroes and relatively less glorified events and provide entertainment at the same time. ‘Airlift’ deserves all the praise and love that it got as it brought to light a very significant but lesser known to public event in Indian history – the 1990 airlift of Indians from Kuwait. Despite mixed reviews and discouraging box office revenues in India the film got a rousing reception at the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival where Ketan Mehta won the NETPAC Special Jury award. Naturally there were protests and demands of ban from leading political parties which also helped the film to stay in the news prior to its release. Mehta took a tad too many creative liberties in his version of retelling of the heroism of Mangal Pandey, the perpetrator of the first war of Indian independence. ![]() ![]() ![]() Alas it wasn’t the case with ‘Mangal Pandey: The Rising’. Add the star power of Aamir Khan to it and we have a delectable trio who should have won the box office hands down. Ketan Mehta and historical dramas go hand in hand.
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