September 11, 2007

AIDS JaaGo at Toronto

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the collection of short films on AIDS by Mira Nair and other directors that's being presented at the Toronto International Film Festival. Rediff has a nice article about it with information about all of its segments. Both Javed Akhtar's daughter Zoya and son Farhan are involved in the project, as is Shabana Azmi, along with many other interesting people. From the Rediff article:

Mira's segment, called Migration, features Irrfan Khan as a closeted gay man. Sameera Reddy, who plays his neglected wife, has a one night stand with Shiney Ahuja, a migrant worker. Raima Sen plays Shiney's wife, who gets AIDS, along with her newborn. The segment is written by Zoya Akhtar.

...

Farhan [Akhtar]'s segment shows a child watching his philandering father (Boman Irani). Years later, the child (now a young man) returns from higher studies in South Africa and discovers his father is dying of AIDS in a hospital. He reluctantly meets his father but cannot help the judgmental attitude that his father had brought it all upon himself. The only gesture he makes towards his father is to give him the details about cricket matches. But his mother (Shabana Azmi) nudges him towards reconciling with the father. The son reminds her of her husband's faithless behaviour and asks her why she still cares for the old man. 'It would have been a different thing if I had left him then,' says the mother. 'But now, he is really sick and he needs us, we cannot abandon him.'
I despair of ever having a chance to see this film, but I hope that it reaches an audience in India and does what its creators want it to do.

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