'Gour Hari Dastaan' to premiere at IFFI 2014

Panaji: The biopic of a Oriya freedom fighter who had to wage a long battle for a second time to get his due after Indian independence, will be premiered during the upcoming International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa.

'Gour Hari Dastaan-The Freedom File', directed by Ananth Mahadevan and penned by renowned journalist C P Surendran, speaks about freedom fighter Gour Haridas, who had to fight it out with the bureaucracy to get recognition.

"I came to know about his second struggle with bureaucracy when Mumbai media broke the story," said Surendran, who met the freedom fighter in Mumbai's Dahisar suburb.

Hari, who joined the freedom struggle in his school days had to wade through the appalling bureaucracy before he came to be known.

"Unless he has got recognition his struggle would have been in the vain. It is the mentality of the contemporary society to forget things," says Surendran, who describes Gour Hari as "hero from common walk of life."

"It is biography of an unknown Indian. He is a man who may not be recognised on the streets. He is hero of an ordinary kind," said the writer.

Surendran who has closely studied the life of this freedom fighter says his struggle is on lines with Gandhian philosophy due to his stubbornness towards the truth.

"And the stubbornness to fight against the system. It is a story about a person who could be your neighbour but you don't know that he is a hero. It is a war waged in silence and finally that gets a reward," he quipped.

Vinay Pathak will be seen as the freedom fighter, while Konkona Sen Sharma plays his wife. The cast also features Ranvir Shorey and Divya Dutta. IFFI 2014 would be held in Goa from November 20-30.