Black Friday

Black Friday (2004)

The shocking truth behind the '93 Bombay blasts

Bombs tear through Bombay in 1993, wreaking havoc and polarising the citizens. With perpetrators at large, the state launches a massive man-hunt to unmask the perpetrators behind these events.

Date of release
2004-08-13
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (108)
Runtime
2h 42m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Anurag Kashyap

Casting

Interesting facts

Black Friday is a 2004 Indian Hindi-language crime drama film written and directed by Anurag Kashyap. Based on Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, a book by Hussain Zaidi about the 1993 Bombay bombings, it chronicles the events that led to the blasts and the subsequent police investigation. Produced by Arindam Mitra of Mid-Day, the film stars Pawan Malhotra, Kay Kay Menon, Aditya Srivastava, Kishor Kadam and Zakir Hussain.

Production

On 12 March 1993, a series of 12 bomb blasts took place in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The attacks were carried out in retaliation for the Bombay riots that occurred earlier in the year. They resulted in 257 deaths and 713 injuries. Anurag Kashyap's feature film directorial debut Paanch ran into censorship trouble and had been shelved when Arindam Mitra, director of operations for Mid-Day, approached him with the book Black Friday: The True Story of the…

Aaj Tak backed off from the project after their executives read the first episode and the project was abandoned. Kashyap then suggested Bhattacharya to make it into a film to which Bhattacharya offered him to direct instead. Zaidi wrote the book following three years of research on the subject. Kashyap researched for a year, including attending court to see how criminals look and to observe how court procedures work.

To recreate several of the film's locations, Kashyap watched actual footage from the government's Film Division, read all the newspapers describing the incident, and looked at press photographs. The most challenging thing for the crew, since the film was being shot in 2003, was to recreate 1993 when there were no cell phones or satellite television in India. The film was shot on the streets of Mumbai to avoid modern cars.

Kashyap shot the film without permission on actual locations. In the film, Dawood's house was shot in three locations including Dubai and Lonavala. Because of the film's low-budget, the crew slept inside buses at night, shot the film during the day and moved to the next location.

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