Film on Mumbai terror attack to premiere in TIFF
TORONTO:Just weeks before the 10th anniversary of 26/11, a film based on the Mumbai terror attack will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Hotel Mumbai, the first feature from Australian director Anthony Maras, focuses on “the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and its survivors,” TIFF said as it released the first list of films slated for its 2018 edition.
“It’s a tough story to revisit and sometimes it’s a tough film to watch because it doesn't shy away from the brutality of what happened but it’s really a hopeful story, about how people who are strangers, band together and help each other," Cameron Bailey, the artistic director of TIFF, told HT.
The action through those fateful days is viewed not just from the perspective of the attackers but also from that of the survivors. Among them are the hotel employees, including one played by British-Indian actor Dev Patel, and the “extraordinary duty" they are called upon to perform during that time of terror.
Bailey said, “It’s a story, I think, that's worth revisiting almost at any time because it's powerful, dramatic.”
Patel, who has featured in several films that have debuted at TIFF, including multiple Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 and, more recently, Lion, returns for yet another world premiere presentation, this time from British director Michael Winterbottom. That film, The Wedding Guest, according to Bailey, is a “fun thriller" that harks back to the “film noir tradition of 1940s Hollywood.”