FILM TEAM AT MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN PREMIERE IN TORONTO

Deepa Mehta is returning to the Toronto International Film Festival 2012 with her ambitious big screen adaptation of the Booker Prizewinning novel “Midnight’s Children.” The film stars Satya Bhabha, Shabana Azmi, Shahana Goswami, Rajat Kapoor, Seema Biswas, Shriya Saran, Siddharth, Ronit Roy, Rahul Bose, Anita Majumdar, Zaib Shaikh and Anupam Kher.

“It’s a rich cinematic experience, there’s no question about that,” said David Hamilton, who also produced Mehta’s Oscar-nominated Water, Heaven on Earth and Bollywood/ Hollywood.

“Whether they like the film or not, I don’t think anyone will leave the theatre feeling, ‘Oh that wasn’t a cinematic experience.’ Everyone will leave knowing that they’d seen something that’s quite special, unique.”

The shooting of Midnight’s Children involved more than 65 locations in Sri Lanka, featured more than 100 different roles, and boasted a wild mix of production challenges. The filming in Sri Lanka covered numerous prominent places such as Wesley College, St. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, St. Joseph’s College, The Royal Colombo Golf Club, The Mayors House, Ayurveda Hospital, Maradana Station, Elphinstone Theatre, Grandpass Nursing Home, Old Town Hall, General Hospital, Galle Face Hotel and victory parades in the streets of Colombo covering Pettah and Fort.

We had everything happening in the movie — we had snakes, cobras, live cobras, we had tanks, military equipment, bombers, things blowing up, people dying and people being born.

According to the film’s producer David Hamilton, one of the toughest days on set was a hospital scene that showed the hero’s birth. The shot involved more than a dozen babies less than two weeks old. “There was no ‘Quiet on the set,“’ Hamilton said laughing. “We could have just had the one baby in focus but to make it real, we wanted to actually have the babies there and they had to be within that two-week (age span). They change. A monthold baby doesn’t look like a newborn. So we had to have them less than two weeks old and so we had this holding room for the mothers and some of the fathers and all their babies. It was quite extraordinary, it was beautiful, actually.”

In appreciation of the hard work of The Film Team, David comments “It was a shared adventure and struggle – to make this huge, ambitious, important film, in your wonderful country. The Film Team was involved in every step along the way and it is not possible to imagine making MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN – without you. Truly not possible.

Mr. Hamilton has invited the Directors of The Film Team to join in the festivities at the Gala opening of the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada.