Kabir Khan: Project was in the making for 20 years

His debut directorial venture for Doordarshan staying with him for two decades, Kabir Khan on revisiting the subject of WWII in the web show.

Even as he gears up to bring the story of India's first World Cup victory to life with Ranveer Singh-starrer '83, Kabir Khan is garnering the attention of cinephiles with a project that has stayed with him for several years. It was in 1999 that the filmmaker made his directorial debut with The Forgotten Army — based on Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army — a project that had such an impact on him that he harboured the desire to recreate it on an elaborate scale, ever since.

"This is a story 20 years in the making," Khan tells mid-day of his upcoming web offering, The Forgotten Army — Azaadi Ke Liye. "The story moved me passionately as a filmmaker ever since I made a documentary on the subject. I have always wanted to tell this largely unheard story of our valiant INA soldiers, who were fighting for our country's independence in a land far away from Indian soil."

Revisiting those events that concerned India before and after the second World War, the show, a source says, was filmed in locations that were crucial to the events that transpired then. "We shot in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. [Certain] locations were recreated in Mumbai on a mammoth scale, even if that meant investing heavily for a mere four-day shoot that required the set-up. The team wanted to make the series look as authentic as possible," says the source.

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