The Bosnian film director Danis Tanović’s sixth feature film, Tigers, which stars Emraan Hashmi, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September, and was screened again on 13 September. It tells the story of Ayan, a college dropout and pharmaceutical representative in Sialkot, Pakistan, who applies for a position as a sales rep for multinational company Lasta’s infant formula products at the suggestion of his new wife, Zainab. He quickly becomes a rising star, charming doctors and nurses as he wines and dines them on Lasta money. However, when Ayan realises that the infant formula he’s peddling is the inadvertent cause of death of babies born to poor and illiterate Pakistani parents, he decides to pick a fight with the corporate giant by resigning and then blowing the whistle on their unethical ways.
The film is based on the true story of Syed Aamir Raza, a former Sialkot resident, now 43 years old, who has lived in Toronto since 2000, driving a cab for a living. Ayan, the character based on Raza, is played by Hashmi, while his wife, Zainab, is played by the National Award–winning actress Geetanjali Thapa. The cast is rounded out by Hollywood heavyweights such as Danny Huston (X Men: Origins; Children of Men) and Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner; The Square) and veterans from the worlds of Indian cinema, television and theatre such as Vinod Nagpal, Supriya Pathak and Adil Hussain.
Tanović, best known as the writer and director of 2001’s Oscar-winning No Man’s Land, had not known of Hashmi’s fame in Bollywood before considering him for the film. He signed the actor on in 2012 after watching Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai at the suggestion of the filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, whom he met at the Venice Film Festival that year. At the time, Tigers had been on hiatus for almost six years. Initial investors had backed out of the project, fearing that a movie taking on the deep-pocketed infant formula corporations could bankrupt them with defamation suits. It was proving too difficult to find new money.
“It was in 2012 or 2011, I can’t even remember,” said the gruff-voiced Tanović, slouched on Hashmi’s hotel room couch the day after the premiere, weary from pushing his body clock through three time zones, Mumbai, Europe and Toronto, within just one week. He recalled that Kashyap had asked him, “What happened with that film?” “He loved the story,” Tanović recounted. “I said well, we can’t find crazy people to finance it. Then he said, ‘I will help you.’ And he did.” Kashyap introduced Tanović to Guneet Monga and Prashita Chaudhury, Mumbai-based producers who helped get the project off the ground.
In a press conference held in an Indian restaurant a day before Tigers’ world premiere, Hashmi, dressed in a black leather jacket, black shirt and carefully ripped jeans, addressed a roomful of South Asian journalists. “Bollywood is generally fairly episodic,” he said. “There’s not so much research, and there are lots of songs and dances. And kisses,” he continued, taking a dig at his reputation as a “serial kisser.” Impressed by Tigers’ heavily researched script, which told a David-versus-Goliath story, Hashmi signed on within a day of being offered the part by Tanović.
Hashmi explained that one of the many challenges of making the film was Tanović’s last minute insistence on translating parts of the English script into Urdu and German, for scenes that were set in Pakistan and Germany, respectively. “Four days before the shoot, I was re-learning my dialogues, trying to get the leheja (way of speaking) right,” he said. “I had not met Aamir. It would have been better if I met him. But it was about being real to the situation he was in. The script helped me, and Danis gave me enough room to play.”
Hashmi did eventually meet Raza the day before the film’s premiere. The next day, I sat down with both of them for another interview in Hashmi’s room at the Hotel InterContinental. Both had seen the movie in its entirety for the first time the previous day. Raza was all praise for Hashmi’s performance. “How he was able to get my character’s struggle, the conversations between me and my wife, and he has not even met me, it was just unbelievable,” said Raza, dressed in a suit and tie for the occasion.
For Hashmi, besides Raza’s effusive praise, the hush in the cinema after the movie ended and the standing ovation Raza received were fitting culmination to a two-year journey that started with his meeting Tanović in his Mumbai home. At the time, Hashmi knew Tanović as the director who had beaten an Indian film to an Oscar award. “I remember telling him this was very surreal because ten years back, when I was in college, I think I almost cursed you because you took the award away from my country,” Hashmi said. “We were cheering for Lagaan that year,” Hashmi added, grinning at the memory. “I remember seeing you on stage, giving your speech. And now you are sitting in my living room. And narrating a script. Really, this is as bizarre as it gets.”
So how is the film? It’s a well crafted and executed procedural, told through a series of flashbacks. Mirroring Tanović’s struggle to make the film, the plot is framed by a Skype conversation between Ayan and a crew in London made up of two filmmakers, as well as an activist who has been assisting Ayan in going public, and a lawyer looking out for the production company’s interest. The device works well, allowing the characters to efficiently reveal information central to the plot.
There are, however, a few niggling inconsistencies. While Adil Hussain slips into his character as a smooth-talking Lasta headhunter with ease, other performances are uneven. Pathak, for instance, comes across more as a Mumbai matron than a Pakistani housewife and mother (Tigers was shot primarily in India, with Patiala standing in for Sialkot). Conversations between Hashmi and Thapa sound inconsistent to those with an ear for Urdu’s nuances. Most jarring, however, are Hashmi’s Skype conversations, in English, delivered in a declamatory accent and tone that sounds unconvincing for a middle-class man from Sialkot who doesn’t have a college degree. Nevertheless, for the most part, Hashmi’s performance holds the film together, well supported by Satyadeep Misra, who plays Faiz, the doctor who alerts Ayan to the devastation he’s causing.
For Tanović, the film’s subject is a critical one to highlight. “Nobody is saying that milk formula shouldn’t exist,” he said. But, added, “that’s absolutely different from telling to those people who don’t need this product that their baby is going to be better off if they use it—which is a lie.”