A Ground-breaking cinematic feast by Kamal Sadanah and Abis Rizvi, set in Bengal’s beautiful and forbidding Sundarbans National Park pits man against majestic and mythical beast.
With its lush mangrove forests and endless square miles of mudflats, wetlands and tidal waterways, the Sundarbans National Park of West Bengal has long been fascinating and forbidding at once, not least owing the park’s most famous residents, the majestic and menacing Bengal Tiger.
The Tiger’s endangered status and its often-terrifying reputation as a man-eater has resulted in it gaining near-mythical status among visitors as well as the inhabitants who call the UNESCO World Heritage Site home.
Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans is an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a group of young mercenaries who go in search of a mythical and rare White Bengal Tigress responsible for the death of a young photojournalist. When the journalist’s brother arrives in the area to reclaim his body, he is stonewalled and forced out by locals who live in terror of an unseen beast who’s roaming the mangrove forests and wreaking havoc.
Determined to find his brother’s remains, ‘Pundit’ assembles a motley crew of mercenaries and adventurers to mount the search, with the help of a beautiful and mysterious local guide.
The ensuing journey takes the team on a terrifying, high-speed chase through one of the most menacing environments on the planet: one which will test the men and women’s courage and resourcefulness to the very limit as they trek deeper and deeper into the marshy heartland of the Sundarbans.
Along the way the team have to battle not only the formidable and frightening beast who rules the Sundarbands but a host of other adversaries including a villainous Tiger poacher.
To give the film as authentic a look and feel as possible, the writers, producer and director Kamal Sadanah and Abis Rizvi, along with the cast and crew, lived on board several large fishing vessels on one of the many estuaries that criss-cross the Sundarbans, living amongst the myriad wildlife of the area, taking in the sights, sounds and the sense of terror one feels in the presence of some of the most dangerous creatures in the world.
The team also used a variety of cutting edge technologies, including ‘Helicams’, unmanned drones mounted with high-resolution cameras which provide a true bird’s eye view of the vastness and beauty of the Sundarbans. Abis Rizvi producer of the film says “With Roar we started with the objective that the visual effects could be compared to any Hollywood film. We wanted Roar to be the film to make Indians across the world proud that a film of this quality of VFX and this quality of film-making had come from Indian shores.”
The film features an ensemble cast including Abhinav Shukla, Himarsha V., Nora Fatehi, Virendra Singh Ghuman, Ali Quli (Bigg Boss), Aaran Chaudhary, Aadil Chahal, Achint Kaur, Subrat Dutta, Pranay Dixit and Pulkt Jawahar. Rizvi says Ali being in the Big Boss house is “A great help in creating awareness of the movie.”
Director Kamal Sadanah says “We were clear – we didn’t want Bollywood (no melodrama, no item numbers). With Roar we wanted ‘edge of the seat’, nail biting action that us and our kids would want to see – every generation in fact. We wanted to achieve pure entertainment.”
‘Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans’ is out in cinemas now.
