Tahaan
Encyclopedia
Tahaan - a boy with a grenade (Hindi
: तहान) is an India
n drama film
by Santosh Sivan
. The film is based on the life of a young boy and his pet donkey. It is a fable-like journey of the eponym
ous eight-year-old boy, whose life revolves around the pursuit to find real purpose in his little world. The film stars Purav Bhandare as the young boy. Anupam Kher
, Sarika
, Rahul Bose
, Rahul Khanna
and Victor Banerjee
form the rest of the cast. It was filmed on location in Jammu and Kashmir
.
), mother Haba (Sarika
) and older sister Zoya (Sana Shaikh) in the Kashmir
valley. The family lives with the ardent hope that the boy's father, who's been missing for over three years, will return home. The death of the grandfather pushes them into financial crisis. The local moneylender and his manager (Rahul Khanna
) take away the family's assets including Tahaan's donkey
, Birbal, in lieu of an unpaid loan. While the rest of the family seeks redemption from the crises, Tahaan is determined to bring Birbal back home.
After salvaging money using various means, Tahaan reaches the moneylender to reclaim Birbal. He is told that old Subhan Darr (Anupam Kher
) bought the donkey and went across the mountains in which Tahaan's father went missing. Gathering courage, Tahaan goes in search of the old man. He finds him and he follows Subhan and his assistant Zafar (Rahul Bose
) and their mule train, leading Birbal despite their protests. Although Subhan promises to return Birbal to Tahaan if he can win a race against the incompetent Zafar, when he wins Subhan refuses to give him Birbal. Instead, Subhan gives the donkey to his eight year old nephew. Zafar tries to give Tahaan his sunglasses as a replacement for the donkey, but Tahaan will not accept the gift.
On his way back home, Tahaan encounters Idrees, a teenager who discourages him, saying that his efforts will not be sufficient to get Birbal back. Instead he suggests to do him a favor. Tahaan is asked to take a package across the mountains in his onward journey. Upon seeing his eagerness, Idrees hands him over a grenade and says that when the time is right, he will be told what needs to be done. At a checkpoint the package and grenade are not discovered due to the fact that the soldiers know and trust Subhan Darr. Tahaan is about to commit a terrorist act with the grenade and has already removed the pin, when he changes his mind and throws it safely in a river. He then sees his father emerge from the building he almost blew up.
Subhan's nephew learns that Tahaan is fond of Birbal, and at his request Subhan gives the donkey back to Tahaan.
(2005) and Before the Rains
(2007), award-winning director Santosh Sivan
got the idea for this film after reading a newspaper report. He formed a fable
-like story from the report.
Since Kashmir
is a strife-torn area, films are rarely picturized there. However in the case of this film, Sivan thought that audiences can relate it to the film well. It was only after 18 years that a film was filmed in Kashmir.
While filming in Pahalgam, Sivan realised to his surprise that children were comfortable with guns. It seemed to him that it was a part of everyday life for them. The film makes eloquent use of Quranic verses or azaan, for which the director took help from research scholars in Kashmir.
hailed the film as a 'visual poem' and "Responsible cinema, brilliant cinema." Raja Sen of Rediff gave it 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "must-watch". Rajiv Masand of CNN-IBN called it a "film of great virtue" and gave 3 out of 5 stars. Baradwaj Rangan called it a "film of first-rate performances".
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
: तहान) is an India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
by Santosh Sivan
Santosh Sivan
Santosh Sivan is an Indian cinematographer, film director, and producer who has worked in Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, and Hindi cinema....
. The film is based on the life of a young boy and his pet donkey. It is a fable-like journey of the eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous eight-year-old boy, whose life revolves around the pursuit to find real purpose in his little world. The film stars Purav Bhandare as the young boy. Anupam Kher
Anupam Kher
Anupam Kher is an Indian actor who has appeared in nearly 400 films and 100 plays. Though mainly appearing in Bollywood films, he has had roles in some films from other nations as well...
, Sarika
Sarika
Sarika was born on 3 June 1962 into a Maharashtrian family in New Delhi, India, and became an acclaimed National Award winning Indian actress.-Career:...
, Rahul Bose
Rahul Bose
Rahul Bose is an Indian actor, screenwriter, director, social activist, and rugby union player.Bose has appeared in Hindi films such as Pyaar Ke Side Effects and Jhankaar Beats. Time magazine named him "the superstar of Indian arthouse cinema" for his work in parallel cinema films like English,...
, Rahul Khanna
Rahul Khanna
- Early life and background :Khanna was born and raised in Mumbai. His father is Bollywood matinee idol & politician, Vinod Khanna, and his younger brother is Bollywood actor, Akshaye Khanna....
and Victor Banerjee
Victor Banerjee
Victor Banerjee is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi, Bengali and English language films. He has also appeared on a number of TV series on Indian television...
form the rest of the cast. It was filmed on location in Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the...
.
Plot
Tahaan (Purav Bhandare) lives with his grandfather (Victor BanerjeeVictor Banerjee
Victor Banerjee is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi, Bengali and English language films. He has also appeared on a number of TV series on Indian television...
), mother Haba (Sarika
Sarika
Sarika was born on 3 June 1962 into a Maharashtrian family in New Delhi, India, and became an acclaimed National Award winning Indian actress.-Career:...
) and older sister Zoya (Sana Shaikh) in the Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
valley. The family lives with the ardent hope that the boy's father, who's been missing for over three years, will return home. The death of the grandfather pushes them into financial crisis. The local moneylender and his manager (Rahul Khanna
Rahul Khanna
- Early life and background :Khanna was born and raised in Mumbai. His father is Bollywood matinee idol & politician, Vinod Khanna, and his younger brother is Bollywood actor, Akshaye Khanna....
) take away the family's assets including Tahaan's donkey
Donkey
The donkey or ass, Equus africanus asinus, is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African Wild Ass, E...
, Birbal, in lieu of an unpaid loan. While the rest of the family seeks redemption from the crises, Tahaan is determined to bring Birbal back home.
After salvaging money using various means, Tahaan reaches the moneylender to reclaim Birbal. He is told that old Subhan Darr (Anupam Kher
Anupam Kher
Anupam Kher is an Indian actor who has appeared in nearly 400 films and 100 plays. Though mainly appearing in Bollywood films, he has had roles in some films from other nations as well...
) bought the donkey and went across the mountains in which Tahaan's father went missing. Gathering courage, Tahaan goes in search of the old man. He finds him and he follows Subhan and his assistant Zafar (Rahul Bose
Rahul Bose
Rahul Bose is an Indian actor, screenwriter, director, social activist, and rugby union player.Bose has appeared in Hindi films such as Pyaar Ke Side Effects and Jhankaar Beats. Time magazine named him "the superstar of Indian arthouse cinema" for his work in parallel cinema films like English,...
) and their mule train, leading Birbal despite their protests. Although Subhan promises to return Birbal to Tahaan if he can win a race against the incompetent Zafar, when he wins Subhan refuses to give him Birbal. Instead, Subhan gives the donkey to his eight year old nephew. Zafar tries to give Tahaan his sunglasses as a replacement for the donkey, but Tahaan will not accept the gift.
On his way back home, Tahaan encounters Idrees, a teenager who discourages him, saying that his efforts will not be sufficient to get Birbal back. Instead he suggests to do him a favor. Tahaan is asked to take a package across the mountains in his onward journey. Upon seeing his eagerness, Idrees hands him over a grenade and says that when the time is right, he will be told what needs to be done. At a checkpoint the package and grenade are not discovered due to the fact that the soldiers know and trust Subhan Darr. Tahaan is about to commit a terrorist act with the grenade and has already removed the pin, when he changes his mind and throws it safely in a river. He then sees his father emerge from the building he almost blew up.
Subhan's nephew learns that Tahaan is fond of Birbal, and at his request Subhan gives the donkey back to Tahaan.
Production
After major commercial releases such as The Terrorist (1999), Asoka (2001), AnandabhadramAnandabhadram
Anandabhadram is a 2005 Malayalam fantasy film based on the novel of the same name by Sunil Parameswaran. The film is the debut Malayalam film venture of director Santosh Sivan and actress Riya Sen...
(2005) and Before the Rains
Before the Rains
Before the Rains is a 2007 Indian-British period drama film directed by Santosh Sivan. The film adapted of a story from the 2001 anthology Israeli film Asphalt Zahov....
(2007), award-winning director Santosh Sivan
Santosh Sivan
Santosh Sivan is an Indian cinematographer, film director, and producer who has worked in Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, and Hindi cinema....
got the idea for this film after reading a newspaper report. He formed a fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
-like story from the report.
Since Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
is a strife-torn area, films are rarely picturized there. However in the case of this film, Sivan thought that audiences can relate it to the film well. It was only after 18 years that a film was filmed in Kashmir.
While filming in Pahalgam, Sivan realised to his surprise that children were comfortable with guns. It seemed to him that it was a part of everyday life for them. The film makes eloquent use of Quranic verses or azaan, for which the director took help from research scholars in Kashmir.
When shooting there we only wanted to show the real life. I had heard some Quranic verses there at some DargahDargahA Dargah is a Sufi shrine built over the grave of a revered religious figure, often a Sufi saint. Local Muslims visit the shrine known as . Dargahs are often associated with Sufi meeting rooms and hostels, known as khanqah...
. I thought I could use them to send a message of hope. I wanted to use the azaan for a nice purpose, a beautiful thing, not for any wrong deed... At the end I wanted to show the positive power of a dream.
Critical reception
The film opened to generally positive reviews. Ziya Us Salam of The HinduThe Hindu
The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40...
hailed the film as a 'visual poem' and "Responsible cinema, brilliant cinema." Raja Sen of Rediff gave it 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "must-watch". Rajiv Masand of CNN-IBN called it a "film of great virtue" and gave 3 out of 5 stars. Baradwaj Rangan called it a "film of first-rate performances".
Awards
- Tahaan won a High Commendation in Children's Feature Film section at the 2009 Asia Pacific Screen AwardsAsia Pacific Screen AwardsThe Asia Pacific Screen Awards is an international cultural initiative of the State Government of Queensland, Australia, through Events Queensland, to honour and promote the films, actors, directors, and cultures of Asia-Pacific to a global audience and to realise the objectives of UNESCO to...
. - Tahaan Won Best feature film award, CIFEJ Award (Centre International du Film pour l’ Enfant et la Jeunesse)and UNICEF Award at 11th Olympia International Film Festival for Children and Young People in 2008 held at GreeceGreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
- Tahaan won "The German Star Of India award" at "Bollywood and Beyond" festival at StuttgartStuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 2009
In year 2008
- Pusan
- Rome
- Cinekid
- London Film Festival
- Olympia Film Festival in Greece. (Winner of 3 awards at the festival)
- Amazonas in Brazil
In year 2009
- Palm Springs Festival in the USA.
- Hong Kong International Film Festival
- Stockholm International Film Festival
- New York International Children’s Film Festival
- Fribourg International Film Festival in Switzerland
- Cairo International Film Festival
- Seattle International Film Festival
- Titanic International Film Festival (Hungary)
- Movies that Matter (Amsterdam) Showcase sponsored by the Amnesty International.
- Munich Film Festival
- Stuttgart Festival