Telugu filmmaker Sankalp Reddy’s The Ghazi Attack starring Rana Daggubati, Taapsee Pannu and Kay Kay Menon is being touted as India’s first war-at-sea film. Originally shot in Telugu and later in Hindi, this film is inspired by a classified mission conducted by the Indian Navy against their Pakistani counterpart in 1971.
So we got down to chat with Rana on making a war film in the times of hyper-patriotism. He also spoke about exploring this new genre and their rigourous shooting schedule.
Question: How do you walk this line of patriotism, where it can very easily go over-the-top. Did you work on it, consciously, or did Sankalp Reddy help you out?
Rana Daggubati: The Ghazi Attack explores a very new genre. Sankalp wanted to make a film that people would actually want to see, as well as one that has the true story in it. It’s a submarine-based war film and we tried to make it festive. It’s a completely new visual. And something that will never come in Indian cinema. It’s the first film that highlights the navy and the war, based on true events. So I’m saying, as a combination of all this, the tone of the film was always meant to be right. Whether making it in Hindi or Telugu or Tamil, there was a certain exercise that we took (of war) to underline it. In terms of script and dialogue, we had writers from all over. We had Indie writers, and others coming in from Mumbai. Somebody from Chennai also came to help us for certain aspects of it. So as a combination of all that, we got the tone right. It took a very long time for us to make the film. One and a half year with actors like Kay Kay, and me. Also, the pitch of the story will always be right with the right kind of writers and directors.
Q: Did you go through a certain kind of conditioning before you shot for the film?
Rana: Not on the real set for the shooting, because we didn’t have that kind of a space. We built the submarine and there was a lot of prepping to be done for it. We got blueprints from Russia. But once we started shooting for it. There was no sunlight at all. We were shooting in a kind of a submarine. You start your shoot right in the morning and get out at about 6 in the evening when it’s already dark. So you don’t see sunlight for a long time. And between shots you’re there. You’re eating there, you’re sleeping there.
Q: It gets disorienting, right? Not being able to tell the time, in a sense.
Rana: It kind of does. We were also trying to figure out how things actually work in a submarine. None of us have seen it. That’s a whole different kind of excitement. After a point it does get scary. So that’s when we had to break the schedule. We went to shoot the outside portions of the film and then came back to shoot in the last leg of the film in the submarine.
Watch the trailer of the film here:
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