Mulk

About the film

Mulk (Hindi pronunciation: [mʊlk]; transl. Country) is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language legal drama film written, produced and directed by Anubhav Sinha. The film is set against the backdrop of a Muslim family and was distributed by Zee Studios. Filmed across in Varanasi and Lucknow, it stars Rishi Kapoor and Taapsee Pannu.

The story centers around the life of a Muslim family, who tries to reclaim its lost honor after a family member gets involved in terrorism. The supporting cast of the film includes Rajat Kapoor, Manoj Pahwa, Prateik Babbar, Ashutosh Rana, Neena Gupta, Prachee Shah Paandya and Indraneil Sengupta.

Plot

Mulk revolves around the struggles of a Muslim joint family from a town in India, who fight to reclaim their honor after a member of their family takes to terrorism.

Murad Ali Mohammed (Rishi Kapoor), a lawyer by profession, lives amiably with his family in a densely populated diverse locality of Varanasi. His daily routine includes Namaz at a nearby mosque followed by some chit-chat over a cup of tea from a tea stall managed and owned by one of his close Hindu neighbors. His close-knit family consists of his wife Tabassum (Neena Gupta), brother Bilaal (Manoj Pahwa) who owns a mobile phone shop, sister-in-law Chhoti-Tabassum (Prachee Shah Pandya), nephew Shahid (Prateik Babbar) and niece Aayat (Eshita Singh, credited as Vartika Singh). Murad's son Aftab (Indraneil Sengupta) lives abroad with his wife Aarti (Taapsee Pannu), who is also a lawyer and is estranged from the family.

The story begins on the day of Murad's 65th birthday, when Aarti comes to visit them. The family enjoys a lovely night with their neighbors and friends. Another story is shown in parallel, where it is revealed that Shahid has joined hands with a terrorist organization headed by the wanted Mehfooz Alam (Sumit Kaul), who assigns Shahid to carry out a bomb blast. After Murad's birthday celebrations, Shahid leaves early morning for Allahabad and executes the attack as planned with two other acquaintances, which causes a lot of casualties.

Production

A newspaper report read by Anubhav Sinha became the point of origin of Mulk and prompted him to develop an idea which he shared with his friends for their feedback. After receiving a positive response from his friends he began scripting the film. After writing 13-14 drafts of the film, Anubhav began narrating the story to his friends in the film industry, one of them being director Shoojit Sircar. Shoojit found the story to be one of the best-written works of Anubhav and requested him to not reconsider this project and instead go ahead with it.

The actors were given a preparation time of three months to get familiar with the roles they were playing. Prateik Babbar, who was to play the role of a Muslim terrorist was asked to watch the documentary Among the Believers and read extensively about David Headley, who is an American terrorist of Pakistani origin. For an appropriate portrayal of courtroom proceedings, Tapsee Pannu and Ashutosh Rana who play defence lawyer and public prosecutor respectively in the film were provided guidance by retired High Court Judge Nadeem Siddiqi from Lucknow for their courtroom sequences. A religious Muslim scholar from Malihabad was called in to supervise the Muslim rituals involving Rishi Kapoor in the film. Mulk was made at a production budget of ₹180 million (equivalent to ₹240 million or US$2.5 million in 2023). Jashoda Madhavji supervised the film's public relations.

In July 2017, it was reported that Rishi Kapoor, Taapsee Pannu and Prateik Babbar had been signed by Anubhav Sinha for his next film called Mulk. In September 2017, Neena Gupta was cast as the wife of Murad Ali. In August 2017, Neena Gupta had put up a post on her Instagram account saying that she was looking for good quality work, and as a response to that post director Anubhav Sinha got in touch with her and offered her a role in his film Mulk. Twelve actors from the Lucknow theatre industry were signed on to do various roles in the film. Eshita Singh, daughter of AAP leader Sanjay Singh and a member of Asmita Theatre Group, was added to the cast, but was credited as Vartika Singh. On 26 September 2017, it was reported that actor Ashutosh Rana would be working with Anubhav Sinha in his next film Mulk, 25 years after Shikast which was the last time the two of them worked together. Initially, Rajat Kapoor was supposed to play the role of Rishi Kapoor's brother and actor Manoj Pahwa was assigned the role of Police Officer Danish Javed but after the arrival of the two actors on set, Anubhav realized that both actors should be playing different roles and not the ones assigned to them, and as a result of that Rajat and Manoj swapped each other's roles.

Soundtrack

The background score of the film is composed by Mangesh Dhakde and songs are composed by Prasad Sashte and Anurag Saikia. The lyrics are written by Shakeel Azmi.

Release

The movie was released on 3 August 2018 in 800 cinemas in India. The teaser of the film was out on 28 June, and official trailer was released on 9 July.

Controversy

After banning the trailer of the movie in Pakistan, the Central Board of Film Censors, Pakistan banned the movie as well on 3 August 2018. Reacting to the decision, director Anubhav Sinha wrote a letter to the citizens of Pakistan.

Key details