The 2 places is also 600 km apart, but Oscar-winning Hollywood director Kathryn Bigelow has chosen Chandigarh and its surroundings in Punjab to depict the Pakistani city of Abbottabad – where Al Qaeda mentor Osama bin Laden was shot dead by US special forces – for her new film.
On Thursday, her unit shot at a dhaba and a few shops in Mani Majra, an old town suburb of Chandigarh, for the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” or “ZD30″.
Sources in Bigelow’s film unit say one of the film scenes might be shot in and around Chandigarh and a few places in neighbouring Punjab. That they had Wednesday shot some scenes within the city’s busy Sector 15 market that's frequented by youngsters because of its location within the education zone.
To give the texture of a Pakistani town, the department stores have signboards written in Urdu, the language universal in Pakistan, while three-wheeler auto-rickshaws and other vehicles too have gotten a brightly coloured layer of paint and Pakistani registration numbers.
A local hardware shop, Ramgarhia Ironmongery store was renamed ‘Shahzad Hardware and Paint Store’ in Urdu. A web based cafe and a phone call centre have also been given Pakistani names for the shots.
“While the supporting actors within the backdrop are mostly hired locally or from Delhi, their clothes and appearance have been made to check with life in Pakistan,” a member who accompanied the unit from Delhi, told IANS here.
“Given the safety environment in Pakistan and the strained US-Pakistan relations, too many risks were taken with shooting the film inside that country.”
Bigelow, who hit a high in 2010 by becoming the primary woman director to win the Academy Award for her film “The Hurt Locker”, depicting war-ravaged Iraq, has chosen locations in north India to shoot her movie at the elimination of bin Laden.
Bin Laden was hunted down by US special operation forces in a midnight raid at a ‘safe house’ within the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in May last year. It saw the special forces landing at a compound and killing the Al Qaeda chief who masterminded the 9/11 attack within the US in 2001 and other terror operations around the world.
Incidentally, the shooting for the film began here just days after the Abbottabad ‘safe house’ was demolished by the authorities in Pakistan earlier this week.
Police sources here said the Hollywood film unit, that's taking the assistance of production companies in Chandigarh and Delhi, is predicted to shoot within the area for every week.
The film is anticipated to be released on the end of this year. – IANS
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