Editor

At the recently-concluded 26th edition of Festival des 3 Continents at Nantes (France), Final Solution won two more international awards :

Montgolfiere d’Or for Best Documentary adjudged by the Jury
Le Prix Fip/Pil’ du Public – the Audience award for the Best Documentary
This is the first ever time that an Indian documentary has won an award at the 3 Continents film festival in France. The other films in competition included Zairat by Bahman Kiarostami (Iran), Tierra de Agua by Carlos Klein (Chile), The Concrete Revolution by Xiaolu Guo (China), Kaya Poochhey Maya sey by Arvind Sinha (India) and Tabou by Mitra Farahani (Iran). Bahman Kiarostami won a special mention by the Jury. Chinese film Ri Ri Ye Ye by Wang Chao was judged the best narrative feature film at the festival.

Other Awards :
Wolfgang Staudte award (Best film at the Forum, Berlinale)
and Special Jury Award (Netpac), Berlin International film festival
Humanitarian Award for Outstanding Documentary, HongKong International filmfest
Best Documentary, Big MiniDV (USA)
Silver Dhow, Zanzibar International film festival
Special Jury Mention, Munich Dokfest.
Nominated for the prestigious Grierson Awards (UK)
Special Award by AFMI, USA
Special Award by NRIs for a Secular and Harmonious India (NRI-SAHI), NY-NJ, USA.

Final Solution was banned in India by the censor board for several months. The ban was lifted in October 2004after a sustained campaign (an online petition, Over 200 “private” protest screenings countrywide on Gandhi’s anniversary on Oct 2, multi-city signature campaigns and the Pirate-and-Circulate campaign). Nearly 15,000 copies of the film have been distributed free as a part of the pirate-and-circulate campaign ( “Get a free copy, make five copies, distribute and ask others to pirate within India”!). Copies are now on sale across several cities in India. Final Solution was rejected by the government-run Mumbai International film festival and screened at Vikalp (http://www.freedomfilmsindia.org), organised by the Campaign Against Censorship. Rakesh Sharma has been an active member of the Campaign since its inception.
Rakesh Sharma has been on a screening tour across USA since mid-Oct. The film was screened at the Wisconsin South Asian studies conference, Berkeley, USC, Yale, NYU, Stanford, Cornell, Duke, Princeton, Wellesley, Vassar and in cities including Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Boston, San Fransisco, Austin, Toronto and other cities.

Final Solution is a study of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat during the period Feb/March 2002 - July 2003, the film graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in India through a study of the 2002 genocide of Moslems in Gujarat. It specifically examines political tendencies reminiscent of the Nazi Germany of early/mid-1930s. Final Solution is anti-hate/ violence as “those who forget history are condemned to relive it”.

Part 1 : Pride and Genocide deals with the genocidal violence against Moslems and its immediate aftermath. It probes the patterns of pre-planned violence by right-wing Hindu cadres which many claim was state-supported, if not state-sponsored. This section reconstructs through eyewitness accounts the attack on Gulbarg (Ahmedabad) and acts of barbaric violence against Moslem women at Eral and Delol/Kalol (Panchmahals) even as Chief Minister Modi traverses the state on his Gaurav Yatra.

Part 2 : The Hate Mandate documents the poll campaign during the Assembly elections in Gujarat in late 2002. It records in detail the exploitation of the Godhra incident ( in which 58 Hindus were burnt alive) by the right-wing propaganda machinery for electoral gains. Post-election, we study the situation after the storm and its impact on Hindus and Moslems – ghettoisation, the call for economic boycott of Moslems and continuing acts of violence more than a year after the carnage.

Rakesh Sharma began his film/TV career in 1986 as an assistant director on Shyam Benegal's Discovery of India. His broadcast industry experience includes the set up/ launch of 3 broadcast channels in India: Channel [V], Star Plus and Vijay TV and several production consultancy assignments. He has now gone back to independent documentary film-making. His last film Aftershocks: The Rough Guide to Democracy won the Best documentary film award at Fribourg, Big MiniDV and Big Muddy and 7 other awards (incl. the Robert Flaherty prize) at various festivals in USA/ Europe in 2002-03. It has been screened at over 90 international filmfests. Aftershocks was also rejected by the government-run Mumbai International film festival in 2002.