March 19: “Who killed Shastri?”, Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri has finally announced the release of his attempt to address this controversial question.
Overall, 2019 is starting to seem like a political year for Bollywood, with political films such as ‘Accidental Prime Minister’, ‘Thackeray’ and upcoming ‘Prime Minister Narendra Modi’ dominating the theatres since the beginning of the year.
Unveiling the first look poster of suspense thriller ‘The Tashkent Files’, he announced that the film will hit theatres on 12 April.
The film is based on the mysterious death of India’s second Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent, formerly a part of USSR which is now in Uzbekistan, in 1966. The demise of Shastri is one big controversial conspiracy laced debate and the film will explore two narratives, which is known to the audience and the second one which is mysterious.
Agnihotri states his film to be the ‘most apolitical film on a political figure’.
He had announced in January that he would make a film on the ‘truth of the biggest cover-up of free India’ on Twitter.
The official poster shows bold text stating, “After defeating Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister mysteriously dead”. The poster clarifies that the film will attempt to uncover the conspiracies around Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death. The important eye catching question will be which theory the makers try to showcase among the many theories.
The film stars an incredible ensemble of Mithun Chakraborty, Naseeruddin Shah, Shweta Basu, Pankaj Tripathi, Vinay Pathak, Mandira Bedi, Pallavi Joshi, Ankur Rathee and Prakash Belawadi.
Helmed by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, the film is bankrolled by Zee Studios.