Watch ‘Zindabad!’ at Alliance Française

Hindi film director Dibakar Banerjee was inspired to make his new movie Shanghai after he drew parallels between Greek diplomat Vassilis Vassilikos’s 1966 novel Z and real-life events in present-day India. Banerjee gleaned fiction from fact to write the film, which is said to be a comment on our government’s lofty ambitions of turning Mumbai into a replica of the eponymous Chinese city. Spanish writer-directors Guillermo Fernandez Florez and Paul-Antoine Lemaille’s hour-long documentary Zindabad! is similarly premised on politicians’ plans to make Mumbai a “world-class city” but uses this as the basis on which to highlight the harsh reality of life in a place where owing to the lack of affordable housing, over 60 per cent of the population resides in slums. Filmed over eight months in 2010, in the hutments of Annabhau Sathe Nagar in Mankhurd, Zindabad! explores the issues faced by slum dwellers across the city, who live under the constant fear of demolition drives. Florez and Lemaille stayed in Annabhau Sathe Nagar to get a first-hand experience of how its residents live, said Simpreet Singh of the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, the activist group that assisted the duo in the making of Zindabad! You can watch the film—which features interviews with slum dwellers, government officials, academics and builders—this Tuesday, May 29 at the Alliance Française auditorium in Churchgate, where it will shown as part of the Root Reel series of documentary screenings. The tone of Zindabad! isn’t completely bleak; the documentary also looks at how its main subjects are “raising [their voices against] issues of discrimination and exploitation,” said Singh.

Alliance Française

LocationTheosopy Hall
40 New Marine Lines

Phone2203 5993

Relevant DatesTuesday, May 29

Hours6.30pm

Ticketing & Price InfoFree

Websitewww.bombay.afindia.org