PANAJI: After the success of East is East over a decade earlier and West is West now, producer Leslee Udwin says she is working on a third film East is West to complete a trilogy on the subject of Asians making a new life for themselves overseas.
Addressing a press meet at the ongoing 41st International Film Festival of India, Udwin said the film would be commercially released in India on 25 February.
West is West, starring Om Puri, Ila Arun, Vijay Raaz, and Jimi Mistry among others, was the opening film of the Festival here yesterday evening which Udwin deemed a great honour.
The release of the film, made with a budget of 2.5 million pound sterling (about Rs 180 million), coincides with its release date in the United Kingdom. The film has been shot in Indian Punjab (depicted as Punjab in Pakistan). Directed by Andy De Emmony, the film’s music is by Rob Lane and Shankar Ehsaan Loy.
Set in Manchester 1975, West is West is a story of the claustrophobic and dysfunctional Khan family’s struggle for survival. Sajid, the youngest Khan, the runt of the litter, is deep in pubescent crisis under heavy assault both from his father‘s tyrannical insistence on Pakistani tradition, and from the fierce bullies in the schoolyard. So, in a last, desperate attempt to ‘sort him out‘, his father decides to pack him off to Mrs. Khan No 1 and family in the Punjab, the wife and daughters he had abandoned 35 years earlier. It is not long before Ella Khan (Mrs. Khan No 2) with a small entourage from Salford, England, swiftly follows to sort out the mess, past and present.
