Bollywood actress Nandita Das is ready with her first directorial venture titled Firaaq…In Such Times. The movie is all about how voilence and terror affects people’s lives.The movie stars Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Raghuvir Yadav, Deepti Naval and Tisca Chopra in it. The movie is being produced under Percept Pictures.

Firaaq is going places even before its commercial release. Prior to its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Sep 5, the film will be screened at the Telluride Film Festival (TFF) in North America.

The film is based on the 2002 Godhra incident in Gujarat. Firaaq begins in 2002 in the state of Gujarat, where three thousand Muslims died in communal riots. In an early scene of almost Shakespearean gravity, two Muslim men dig a mass grave for the victims. From there, the story jumps forward one month, away from the direct physical effects of the conflict to the more amorphous – but increasingly persistent – inner discord.

When Hanif and Muneera return to the modest home they had fled during the violence, they find it ransacked. With their lives shattered not simply by vandalism but by betrayal from their neighbours, Hanif seeks revenge. Elsewhere, middle-class Hindus Sanjay and Arati were untouched by the hostilities, but are met with new moral challenges. Serene older musician Khan Saheb (Naseeruddin Shah) has tried to transcend religious differences, but as a Muslim living in a Hindu neighbourhood, he now finds this stance more complicated. At the same time, Anu and Sameer, an intermarried Hindu-Muslim couple, finally face the tensions they have long suppressed.

Das interweaves these stories over one twenty-four-hour period, as characters of both faiths and from many levels of society grapple with the new, post-violence reality. Through it all, a young boy named Mohsin embarks on an urban odyssey from his refugee camp towards a better future, wherever he might find it.

Firaaq is an Urdu word that means both separation and quest. Like this courageous and essential debut film, the word acknowledges divisions while pointing a way forward to hope.