Mumbai: Rahat Kazmi the Director of acclaimed film IDENTITY CARD has recently completed MANTOSTAAN; a dark satire based on four burning and the most controversial short stories (Khol DO, Thanda Ghosht, Assignment and Aakhri Salute) of Legendary Urdu writer Saadat Hassan Manto. Regarding his works around the partition, says Manto - “Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still slave in both these countries -- slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity.”

Sonal Sehgal is super excited to play the character of Kulwant Kaur from Thanda Ghost, she admits that MANTOSTAAN has been an entirely different experience and is a very powerful film indeed. Say Sonal, “My character is very dark and disturbing, somebody who doesn’t leave you long after you leave the set. It’s a character you haven’t seen on screen before”. Raghubir Yadav, Shoib Kazmi, Virendra Saxena, Tariq Khan, Raina Bassnet, Sakshi bhatt and Rahat Kazmi himself have played key characters in the film.

Saadat Hassan Manto was heartbroken and shaken by the trauma the partition brought in its wake, and some of his best pieces revolve around what he saw during those horrific months. The stories of ‘Mantostan’ are about the single-minded dedication with which men killed men, the remorse felt by some and the tears shed by murderers.

BACKGROUND:

In the riots, which preceded the partition in the Punjab Province, between 200,000 and 2,000,000 people were killed in the retributive genocide between the religions, estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history.

MANTOSTAAN is produced by RAHAT KAZMI FILMS, TARIQ KHAN PRODUCTIONS, AADITYA PRATAP SINGH ENTERTAINMENTS, CO-PRODUCED BY ZEBA SAJID in association with MEDIA MARK INTERNATIONAL CORP. CANADA.