Faraaz, the film, is about Faraaz, a young man who stands tall and faces death in the eye when a terrorist asks him to abandon his friends and run for his life, at gunpoint. Based on the July 2016 terrorist attack inside the Holy Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, the film directed by Hansal Mehta is a conversation starter.
It is also a stark reminder of that dreadful night when so-called custodians of religion unleashed terror by killing 20 and taking another 50, hostage. At that time, when the remaining hostages were finally let go after hours upon hours of torture, one 20-year-old boy from a rich Bangladeshi family stood up to the tormentor.
When the latter let him go for being a Muslim and held his non-Muslim friends back, he chose to take a bullet instead of leaving the cafe alive. During the tormenting hours inside the cafe, Mehta brought out an ideological warfare through a debate between Nibras and Faraaz. While the former says that he and his ilk are powered by their missionary belief that they were delivering Islam from the wicked influences of the kaafirs, Faraz says that it is from those like Nibas that he wants his Islam back.
Excerpts from an interview with Hansal Mehta:
What is the intended message you wanted to give out through Faraaz?
I don't believe that a film can give one single message. As an audience, you can take from it what you want. The point was to push you to have a conversation after watching the film and engage with both the characters, the terrorist as well as the hostage.
Why now?
I think there is no better time for such a film. It is important to be a Faraaz in today's times. Nobody should call out religion to justify violence and aggression and incite hatred. What we are presently hearing in today's times, are voices that incite hatred and encourage bigotry and this is happening now more than ever. So, it is important for us to counter these and the counter-narrative is provided by Zahaan Kapoor's character Faraaz.
In the conversation between the terrorist Nibras (Aditya Rawal) and the hostage Faraaz (Zahaan Kapoor) about Islam, it seems as if the hostage should have had more dialogues to his defence. What do you think?
I don't think so. Because this is a story about a boy who is an unlikely hero and he stands up for himself when the moment comes. Twice he's given the choice. In situations like these, I did not see him suddenly standing up and giving out a speech. He's far removed from the stereotype of a hero.
That is the way you've conducted all your protagonists in your previous films as well.
Yes, exactly. So for instance, in the film Aligarh (2015), the protagonist professor Ramchandra Siras, essayed by Manoj Bajpayee, never speaks about his own sexuality in a shrill voice. In fact, he was quiet throughout most of the film. He goes on to talk about his identity only later on in the film. Faraaz, like any of us, is an unlikely hero or an unlikely saviour.
That was also how Faraaz, the real person, was in terms of his personality and disposition?
Yes. We asked his family what do you think he must have been doing inside and they said he might have cried a lot. I think it is the choices we make, that make us a hero or not. The choice that Faraaz makes is to stand up for his friends and that is what makes him the hero. He need not fit into our preconceived notions of what a hero should be like in a film.