OTT platforms were meant to make movies widely accessible to its audiences. It is, thus, surprising and disappointing that – Shahid – a movie which has won 2 national awards (Best Direction and Best Actor) is not present on any major OTT platform. It is available on a pay per-view basis on YouTube but is not part of any major streaming platform such as Netflix, Disney+Hotstar or Prime Video.
Late evening on Wednesday, director Hansal Mehta on Twitter expressed his sadness on one of his most appreciated movies – Shahid – not being available on any major streaming website. Shahid, which released in 2013, is a biographical movie based on the life of lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi. It stars Rajkummar Rao in the titular character along with Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Prabhleen Sandhu and Baljinder Kaur appearing in supporting roles.
The movie gave voice to the story of Shahid Azmi who was mired in controversy as cases handled by him were of people accused of terrorism. He was shot dead by two gunmen when he was handling the case of an accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attack.
Shahid premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival before a theatrical release in 2013. Though its collections were modest at the box office, it was widely appreciated by critics and audiences at various film festivals. Rajkummar Rao’s performance was particularly praised by critics.
The movie was streaming on Sony Liv in 2020. However, it is not clear when and why was it pulled off from that platform. Director Hansal Mehta, as mentioned in his tweet, is himself not aware about who owns the rights to the film. The movie was jointly produced by Anurag Kashyap and Sunil Bohra in association with Ronnie Screwvala and Siddharth Roy Kapur under the UTV Spotboy banner.
A movie, this widely acclaimed with brilliant performances and based on a topic that is socially relevant, deserves to be available on one of the mainstream OTT platforms. May be, now that the director of the movie has highlighted this issue, one of the producers will be able to throw light on who owns the rights to the movie and help make it available to cinephiles globally.
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