Shahid

Shahid (2013)

शाहिद

Based On The Life Of One Of The Most Controversial Figures Of Our Time.

A story based on real-life human-rights and criminal lawyer, Shahid Azmi, who was slain while defending the wrongly accused by the law in terrorist activities.

Date of release
2013-10-18
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (80)
Runtime
2h 9m
Genres
Drama, Crime
Director
Hansal Mehta

Casting

Interesting facts

Shahid is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film directed by Hansal Mehta, written by Sameer Gautam Singh and jointly produced by Anurag Kashyap and Sunil Bohra in association with Ronnie Screwvala and Siddharth Roy Kapur under the UTV Spotboy banner. Based on the life of lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi, who was assassinated in 2010, the film stars Rajkummar Rao as Azmi; Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Prabhleen Sandhu and Baljinder Kaur appear in supporting roles.

Production

Mehta stated in an interview with Priyanka Pereira of The Wall Street Journal that he needed a break after some of his films proved to be a box-office failures, like Woodstock Villa (2007) and Raakh (2010). On 11 February 2010, lawyer Shahid Azmi was shot dead in his office in Mumbai at the age of 32.

Both Mehta and Singh read several of Azmi's cases for the story. Mehta noticed that they were written in simple English that could be understood by anyone: "It told me he was a no-nonsense guy. He wanted to fight the battle and not beat around the bush." Mehta and Singh also met his colleagues, attended court sessions, petitions, litigations and learned how to get a client acquitted.

Mehta said he was looking for "big stars" for the film, but most were not interested because of his earlier failures. At the time, the film's co-producer Anurag Kashyap suggested he cast Rajkummar Rao thinking he was perfect for the role of Azmi. Later, casting director Mukesh Chhabra sent Rao to Mehta's office. Mehta cast him after a screen test. Mehta felt Rao "surrendered himself completely" to the film.

Tigmanshu Dhulia, Prabhleen Sandhu, Kay Kay Menon and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub played supporting roles in the film. Vivek Ghamande played the role of Faheem Ansari while Baljinder Kaur of Ammi.

Shahid was made on a production budget of ₹6.5 million (US$67,000) and filmed in complete secrecy. It was shot in several Mumbai neighbourhoods Azmi had frequented including Kurla, Govandi and Pydhonie. Mehta chose to shoot in the apartment above Azmi's ground floor residence in the Taximen's Colony as he wanted to "capture the sense of claustrophobia and unkemptness of his home".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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