Australian filmmaker Anthony Maras’s debut feature film, Hotel Mumbai, starring Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Anupam Kher and Tilda Cobham-Hervey, is pegged on the 2008 Mumbai attacks at the Taj Mahal Palace. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last October and releases in India on November 29. Maras’s short film The Palace (2011) has won several awards.
Q/ Hotel Mumbai has taken some time to release in India.
A/ Yes, it has. India is the most important country for the film in many ways as the story happened here. There was a time we were very worried that it would not release at all. It was being distributed in the US by a company that went bankrupt. The distribution plans around the world [were disrupted]. We were working on the film without any hope of it releasing. But I am grateful that it has, and hope that it resonates with the people here.
Q/ This is your first feature film. Why would you choose, as your subject, something that happened far from home?
A/ I had a friend who had travelled from Adelaide, Australia, to Mumbai to get married. The wedding was on November 28, 2008, at the Taj Mahal Palace. They narrowly escaped [getting shot] at Cafe Leopold, and later at the Taj as well. I was very intrigued by the story. We had seen documentaries narrating what happened, but I wanted to capture what the survivors went through and put it out for the audience. We read around 1,000 pages of transcripts of the [Ajmal] Kasab case and also spoke to his lawyer.
Q/ Your first short, Azadi, came out in 2005. Why did you take such a long time before your first feature film?
A/ I was studying law before I got interested in making films. Azadi happened just after I graduated from law school. I had a lot of learning to do in terms of being a filmmaker and a storyteller.
Q/ You have also mentioned that your short films have been your preparation ground for Hotel Mumbai.
A/ Yes. A lot of the techniques that I used in my short films immensely helped me while shooting Hotel Mumbai. For Azadi, for instance, which was about Afghan refugees, we shot a lot of news footage. That technique of blending in the real footage with the narrative came in handy while making Hotel Mumbai.