Barreto might have put Mohun Bagan on top at the 13th Federation Cup, but the onus of giving the club its due on the big screen is on director Arunava Roychowdhury, better known as Arun Roy in Mumbai now. The director is all set to make a Bengali film titled Sulochona with the backdrop of Mohun Bagan being the first Asian team to have defeated a foreign team when they won the 1911 IFA Shield defeating East Yorkshire Regiment 2-1.Rahul of Chirodini... Tumi Je Amar fame has already been cast in the film. Apart from many stage artistes, the cast also includes producer-distributor Arijit Dutta playing the crazed revolutionary. Though on the surface, this will be a sports film, the subtext has a deep patriotic flavour. Many still regard the day the match was won as the Independence Day of Bengali Football. Close to a lakh people had ferried in boats, travelled in overcrowded trams, buses and trains to watch the match. Reuters had reported that “the magnitude of the crowd was so large that the scorers and announcers couldn’t work. The scores were being broadcast in the form of kites in the sky”.
The then Mohun Bagan team included Hiralal Mukherjee, Bhuti Sukul, Sudhir Chatterjee, Manmohan Mukherjee, Rajen Sengupta, Nilmadhav Bhattacharya, Kanu Roy, Habul Sarkar, Abhilash Ghosh, Bijoydas Bhaduri and Shibdas Bhaduri.When the barefoot Mohun Bagan players had defeated the British, cries of Vande Mataram had also rent the air. For the record, the next time Mohun Bagan won their shield was in 1947. Talking about the film, Dutta says, “This is a Bengali version of Lagaan. The ending is superb. Made on a budget of Rs 1.5 crore, we are doing everything in our capacity to market the film globally. Phhite bandha football shuddhu anano hochhe.”
While art director Indranil Ghosh has been roped in to recreate those times, Mokam (which recently scored an anthem for Maradona’s visit) will compose the film’s theme song. Says Mayukh of Mokam, “Scoring for Maradona’s track was a dream come true. We had had a word with the director two years ago on this project to compose a chorus with polyphonic sound.” A city fashion school has also been roped in to design the costumes. The portions of the film showing the matches will be shot in Murshidabad simply because back then, there were no stadia the way one has in Kolkata now. The film releases on July 29 (the same day the match was won in 1911) next year with a football match between the cast and a second division team from England!
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