Mumbai rat killers all set to make a killing on silver screen

Armed with flashlights and sticks, a group of contract killers are trawling the streets of Mumbai. It is nearly midnight when they spot what they are looking for. A blinding flash of light, and they raise their sticks to strike down hard at their victim. Then, they pick up the corpse and fling it on the rising mound of dead bodies nearby. At the crack of dawn, these 50-odd men stuff the bodies in sacks and trudge back home.

Employed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to rid the city of its rodent population, this team is headed by Behram Harda, who has killed close to 28 lakh rats in the last 37 years. “Their stories are funny in parts, but also dark and disturbing,” says filmmaker Miriam Chandy Menacherry, who has made a documentary, Rat Race, on the subject.

The film, which won the co-production challenge at the Cannes film festival in 2010, will now be screened at multiplexes owned by Big Cinemas and PVR across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore on April 20. “For the first time, a documentary is being screened in cinema halls. It is high time we started valuing and encouraging such films and their makers,” says actor Jaaved Jaaferi, who has launched the Indian Documentary Foundation to sustain independent alternative cinema by creating space and audience for them in commercial theatres.

Long treated as mainstream cinema’s poor cousin, documentary films are rarely seen on the big screen in Mumbai. “Unlike in India, documentary films have commercial releases and are appreciated by audiences in the West. For example, Rat Race was screened to packed cinema halls in Amsterdam despite the fact that the subject is local. Now, we are waiting for the response of Mumbai audiences,” says Menacherry.

However, industry insiders insist that the audience for independent issue-based movies has been growing in Mumbai and other metro cities. “The market for documentary films and alternative content is surely opening up, but it is too early to say how lucrative it is,” says Kamal Gianchandani, president of PVR Pictures.

He adds that Rat Race will have fewer shows than mainstream films and tickets will be priced accordingly. “The idea is to cater to all segments however small they are. Also, alternative programming or special content is of long-term interest to multiplexes during the times when there is a dearth of mainstream films at the box-office,” Gianchandani says, adding that PVR will continue to support and exhibit documentary films.