Powerful people do questionable things at times. An insider sometimes steps forward in order to discuss the wrongdoings in public. Yet the public response can be surprisingly negative.
Whistle-blowers – as civic minded individuals are called in the WikiLeaks age – can face a range of fallout, from media smear campaigns to death threats.
“Tigers,” the 2014 feature film by Oscar-winning Bosnian writer-director Danis Tanovic, takes up the case of a civic minded individual – a salesman who, after pitching an international corporation’s baby formula, later blows the whistle on his bosses’ dodgy sales practices.
“Tigers” is the sixth feature of Tanovic, who burst into the spotlight in 2001 with his Oscar-winning debut feature “No Man’s Land.” Indebted to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” Tanovic’s premiere used the premise of two enemies trapped in a trench to lampoon the local and international absurdities surrounding the Bosnian War.
Later films have been located in various parts of the world – from Iraq and the UK to his native Bosnia – but Tanovic’s stories have all tended to focus on the experiences of the common man. “Tigers” falls into line with precedent, except for the film’s Pakistani setting, and north Indian locations.
“It’s been eight years we were trying to make this movie,” Tanovic says. “It’s much harder to make this kind of film. First, I made the screenplay out of documents. You have a document that says something [about corporate corruption, say] and must make into a story that’s interesting and suspenseful while getting the story right.
“You can shoot this story in many different ways, but there were aspects that I really wanted people to feel – how much this man and his family suffered from [his choices], how hard we worked to do this and how many times we were stopped.
“There’s also shooting in a language that I don’t speak, which was a really crazy experience. I really hate it when I watch Hollywood movies about Bosnia and they make terrible mistakes – something as simple as the way people say ‘Hello.’
“So I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of young people and used them to follow the [veracity of the] cultural references, and the language ... If the film works, it’s because of all these people surrounding me.”
At the center of “Tigers” is Ayan (Emraan Hashmi), an able young man who still lives with his family – which has been sliding from respectability since his father, a lawyer, was sacked for shady reasons.
Ayan works as a salesman in Pakistan’s pharmaceutical sector. With his personable manner he scrapes together a living but he can never be a success because the sales representatives of the multi-national pharmaceutical companies all but monopolise the market.
As he’s just married the lovely Zainab (Geetanjali), Ayan applies for a sales position with one of the multinationals – the film names the corporation but immediately renames it “Lasta.”
Though he lacks a college degree, Ayan’s determination impresses the corporation’s local manager, who gives him a chance.
Working for an international pharma firm opens up all sorts of doors for him. Not only do the products virtually sell themselves, each salesman is allocated a well-padded expense account – “imprest funds” for wining and dining potential buyers.
Ayan dives in headfirst. Thanks to his conscientious pre-sale research, his bribes to the city’s doctors and nurses are doubly appreciated, and health care professionals give an even firmer push to his company’s products.
Ayan remains oblivious to how corrupt the international pharma’s commercial practice is. Then Doctor Faiz (Satyadeep Misra), a client-cum-friend, returns from his masters’ research in Karachi.
The doctor introduces the salesman to the negative face of the infant formula he’s been pushing his clients to prescribe. Most of the poor residents of Pakistan (and India and Bangladesh) have no access to clean drinking water. When they use contaminated water to mix formula for their children, they grow sick and often die.
Ayan decides he must do something to make amends.
The plot of “Tigers” is more complex than that of a saintly man trying to do good in the world. It becomes obvious that Ayan himself is not untainted by corruption – ethics often being among the first casualties when it comes to rearing a family.
Aside from making Ayan more believable to the audience, the protagonist’s compromised morality makes him a challenging figure to those who want to tell his story in the mass media.
Not one but two major television crews – one German, the other British – start making major documentary films about Pakistan’s baby formula scandal, with Ayan’s disclosures at the centre. Neither is able to air their work.
Tanovic notes that it’s become increasingly difficult to make critically minded films like “Tigers.”
“If I wanted to make a robot action film I’d probably get all the money I wanted for it,” he laughs. “But I’ve lived through war ... and I know how fragile this world is.
“You survive wars and you learn things about people and life. I’m very cynical. At the same time I’m very humanist. And I’m a father. I want a better world for my kids ... When you have kids you become less important and they become more important.”
The production challenges are mirrored by those in getting such films distributed. “Tigers” premiered earlier this year at TIFF, an important distribution hub for cinema in North America and the world.
“It’s really not easy to get films like this seen by people,” Tanovic says.
“The problem with TIFF these days is that if you don’t have an American distributor, you almost don’t exist. There’s just so much film there that it’s easy to be lost. I was lucky because people know me they come to see my films.
“We haven’t found a North American distributor to this point. I know they’re talking to some people but ... it’s not the easiest thing in the world to sell. There’s a huge change happening today. I have a feeling that people are trying to find different ways to distribute their films.”
Tanovic says he has many irons in the fire and frankly can’t say which one he will shoot next. Right now he’s working on a project at the Sarajevo school where his wife teaches,
“I’ve been working there lately with kids trying to make some,” he pauses. “I don’t even know what it is, but hopefully it’s gonna be some kind of musical.
“I’m interested in process for them. I became very preoccupied with education, because of my kids too. For me, it was important to show them what film is. So last year we did a theater performance and we went through the whole process. They were writing it and working on it. The last day when it all came together, it clicked.
“If nothing else, it may show them all these things about filmmaking. You never know, one day one of them may become a DoP or a sound engineer. Who knows?
“My problem with what’s happening in education now is they’re still teaching kids facts, which I think is completely stupid. You want facts. With this phone you have, you can find whatever fact you want in two seconds.
“But what you’re going to do with that fact? That’s knowledge. That’s creativity.”
Whistle-blowers – as civic minded individuals are called in the WikiLeaks age – can face a range of fallout, from media smear campaigns to death threats.
“Tigers,” the 2014 feature film by Oscar-winning Bosnian writer-director Danis Tanovic, takes up the case of a civic minded individual – a salesman who, after pitching an international corporation’s baby formula, later blows the whistle on his bosses’ dodgy sales practices.
“Tigers” is the sixth feature of Tanovic, who burst into the spotlight in 2001 with his Oscar-winning debut feature “No Man’s Land.” Indebted to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” Tanovic’s premiere used the premise of two enemies trapped in a trench to lampoon the local and international absurdities surrounding the Bosnian War.
Later films have been located in various parts of the world – from Iraq and the UK to his native Bosnia – but Tanovic’s stories have all tended to focus on the experiences of the common man. “Tigers” falls into line with precedent, except for the film’s Pakistani setting, and north Indian locations.
“It’s been eight years we were trying to make this movie,” Tanovic says. “It’s much harder to make this kind of film. First, I made the screenplay out of documents. You have a document that says something [about corporate corruption, say] and must make into a story that’s interesting and suspenseful while getting the story right.
“You can shoot this story in many different ways, but there were aspects that I really wanted people to feel – how much this man and his family suffered from [his choices], how hard we worked to do this and how many times we were stopped.
“There’s also shooting in a language that I don’t speak, which was a really crazy experience. I really hate it when I watch Hollywood movies about Bosnia and they make terrible mistakes – something as simple as the way people say ‘Hello.’
“So I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of young people and used them to follow the [veracity of the] cultural references, and the language ... If the film works, it’s because of all these people surrounding me.”
At the center of “Tigers” is Ayan (Emraan Hashmi), an able young man who still lives with his family – which has been sliding from respectability since his father, a lawyer, was sacked for shady reasons.
Ayan works as a salesman in Pakistan’s pharmaceutical sector. With his personable manner he scrapes together a living but he can never be a success because the sales representatives of the multi-national pharmaceutical companies all but monopolise the market.
As he’s just married the lovely Zainab (Geetanjali), Ayan applies for a sales position with one of the multinationals – the film names the corporation but immediately renames it “Lasta.”
Though he lacks a college degree, Ayan’s determination impresses the corporation’s local manager, who gives him a chance.
Working for an international pharma firm opens up all sorts of doors for him. Not only do the products virtually sell themselves, each salesman is allocated a well-padded expense account – “imprest funds” for wining and dining potential buyers.
Ayan dives in headfirst. Thanks to his conscientious pre-sale research, his bribes to the city’s doctors and nurses are doubly appreciated, and health care professionals give an even firmer push to his company’s products.
Ayan remains oblivious to how corrupt the international pharma’s commercial practice is. Then Doctor Faiz (Satyadeep Misra), a client-cum-friend, returns from his masters’ research in Karachi.
The doctor introduces the salesman to the negative face of the infant formula he’s been pushing his clients to prescribe. Most of the poor residents of Pakistan (and India and Bangladesh) have no access to clean drinking water. When they use contaminated water to mix formula for their children, they grow sick and often die.
Ayan decides he must do something to make amends.
The plot of “Tigers” is more complex than that of a saintly man trying to do good in the world. It becomes obvious that Ayan himself is not untainted by corruption – ethics often being among the first casualties when it comes to rearing a family.
Aside from making Ayan more believable to the audience, the protagonist’s compromised morality makes him a challenging figure to those who want to tell his story in the mass media.
Not one but two major television crews – one German, the other British – start making major documentary films about Pakistan’s baby formula scandal, with Ayan’s disclosures at the centre. Neither is able to air their work.
Tanovic notes that it’s become increasingly difficult to make critically minded films like “Tigers.”
“If I wanted to make a robot action film I’d probably get all the money I wanted for it,” he laughs. “But I’ve lived through war ... and I know how fragile this world is.
“You survive wars and you learn things about people and life. I’m very cynical. At the same time I’m very humanist. And I’m a father. I want a better world for my kids ... When you have kids you become less important and they become more important.”
The production challenges are mirrored by those in getting such films distributed. “Tigers” premiered earlier this year at TIFF, an important distribution hub for cinema in North America and the world.
“It’s really not easy to get films like this seen by people,” Tanovic says.
“The problem with TIFF these days is that if you don’t have an American distributor, you almost don’t exist. There’s just so much film there that it’s easy to be lost. I was lucky because people know me they come to see my films.
“We haven’t found a North American distributor to this point. I know they’re talking to some people but ... it’s not the easiest thing in the world to sell. There’s a huge change happening today. I have a feeling that people are trying to find different ways to distribute their films.”
Tanovic says he has many irons in the fire and frankly can’t say which one he will shoot next. Right now he’s working on a project at the Sarajevo school where his wife teaches,
“I’ve been working there lately with kids trying to make some,” he pauses. “I don’t even know what it is, but hopefully it’s gonna be some kind of musical.
“I’m interested in process for them. I became very preoccupied with education, because of my kids too. For me, it was important to show them what film is. So last year we did a theater performance and we went through the whole process. They were writing it and working on it. The last day when it all came together, it clicked.
“If nothing else, it may show them all these things about filmmaking. You never know, one day one of them may become a DoP or a sound engineer. Who knows?
“My problem with what’s happening in education now is they’re still teaching kids facts, which I think is completely stupid. You want facts. With this phone you have, you can find whatever fact you want in two seconds.
“But what you’re going to do with that fact? That’s knowledge. That’s creativity.”
No comments:
Post a Comment