In a startling development, the real will come together with the reel in debutant director Raja Krishna Menon’s Airlift. The film, for those who came in late, is about the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussain in 1990 and the stranded Indians who were rescued by one Indian businessman Ranjit Katyal.
Now in an expected turn of events, director Menon has chanced upon real-life pictures of the evacuation of Indians from Kuwait that has inspired Airlift. The pictures has been incorporated at the end of the feature film.
Says the film’s director Raja Krishna Menon. “We found two rolls of undeveloped film in the Air India office. It was very hard to develop the rolls. But we managed and found to our amazement that they were pictures of the actual evacuation. We have used these images to wrap up the film.”
Menon agrees those visuals add an extra dimension to the film. “These pictures really bring the evacuation to life. It’s palpable, the emotion that is visible makes the story we’ve told seem far more authentic.”
