Symbolizing the tale of any developing city, ‘City of Gold’ is the story of the forgotten masses, of that city on whose sweat and blood the modern day swanky malls and glittering multiplexes are built. Starring Satish Kaushik, Seema Biswas, Vineet Kumar Singh, Karan Patel, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Siddharth Jadhav, Ankush Chaudhari, Sachin Khedekar, Vinay Apte, Shashank Shende, Veena Jhamkar, Kashmera Shah, and Anusha Dandekar, ‘City of Gold’ explores the struggle, trials and tribulations faced post the great Mumbai mill strike by the mill-workers’ and their families. The film that portrays the story of those long-forgotten masses, not only explores the misery of these mill workers narrated through the story of one family, the politico-socio environment existing during the early eighties but also realistically depicts the birth of the true underbelly of organized crime in Mumbai. It is a crisp, stylized and hard hitting film based on the mill strike of 1982.
Arun Rangachari said, “DAR Motion Pictures aims to indigenously conceive and develop bench-mark creative concepts, utilize the best available technical and artistic expertise, deploy comprehensive marketing best-practices and utilize a host of innovative and focused content delivery channels, to reach out to audiences not only in India but globally. This is well reflected in our choice of really good content-driven subjects such as ‘City of Gold’ our association with highly competent and well-respected directors such as Mahesh.’’
Commenting on the movie Mahesh Manjrekar said, “Having grown up in Wadala, with many millworkers as my close friends even till this day, City of Gold has been a very difficult movie for me. I have had to live with it for a long time now. It’s been over four years since Jayant Pawar, a former millworker, a journalist and the writer of this film, and me first discussed the possibility of making this film which is based on a very successful play on the mill strike titled Adhantar, also written by Jayant. The subject is very serious and the treatment could most definitely not be frivolous and hence it was amply evident to both of us right from the beginning that we would need to partner with someone who was as passionate about the subject as us. I am very happy that the DAR team has been as dedicated and involved in this project as us and that together we have been able to make what I consider a really good film. I am humbled by the response that this film has received thus far and I sincerely do hope that it transcends boundaries, entertains, as well as meaningfully engages audiences around the country.”
Other credits in the movie include screenplay Jayant Pawar & Mahesh Manjrekar, Director of Photography by Ajit Reddy, Edited by Sarvesh Parab and Music direction by Ajit Parab.
In addition to this film DAR has also developed a production slate of at least 10 other film projects, several of them in multiple languages through 2012. Furthermore DAR also plans to launch a film fund in the second half of 2010 that will focus on both Hindi and regional cinema.
