Liz Mermin shot her feature-length documentary “Shot In Bombay” in summer 2007 during the shooting of Apoorva Lakhia’s Shootout At Lokhandwala, but it’s far more than just a sort of “making of”. It looks behind the glamour of the Mumbai film industry which since long has been rumoured to at least partially being associated with the underworld. Fiction met reality when actor Sanjay Dutt, while playing a tough police officer hunting a gang of criminals in the true-life story of Shootout At Lokhandwala, regularly had to attend court himself as he was convicted of illegal possession of arms which were linked to the Mumbai Bomb Blasts of 1993. Dutt’s legal woes affected the film’s schedule as the actor often had to take days off for the court hearings.
Shootout At Lokhandwala became a success – just a few weeks before Dutt received his sentence. Liz Mermin captured the ironies of the whole situation in her documentary “Shot in Bombay” which will be aired on BBC4, October 20, 22pm. The DVD will be available from November 10.
