'Toba Tek Singh' to bring curtain down on LIFF

Filmmaker Ketan Mehta's "Toba Tek Singh", based on one of legendary writer Saadat Hasan Manto's stories, will be the closing movie at the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), to be held from July 14-24. The director says the South Asian community will love the film.

"'Toba Tek Singh' is one of the finest piece of literature on partition written by one of the greatest writers of our time Saadat Hasan Manto, and also a true representation of the dilemma most people faced during Indo-Pak partition.

"We are very happy that it has been chosen as the closing film at London Indian Film Festival. I am sure the audience will love the film, especially the South Asian community," Mehta told IANS.

Said to be a moving and at times joyous version of the story, the movie is produced by the Zeal For Unity project by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited.

It features award winning and acclaimed actor Pankaj Kapur in a career-defining performance as Bishen Singh, a Sikh inmate of a mental institution, who hasn't slept for 15 years and always asks the same question "Where is Toba Tek Singh?", the name of his home village.

The new warden, played by Vinay Pathak, takes delight in Bishen and the other patients' eccentricities. However, with the partition of India and Pakistan it seems that the world outside is more insane than the folk inside, and the institution must give up all its Hindu and Sikh inmates. Singh is marched to the new border, but in which country is his beloved home -- that forms the story.

--IANS

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