indian cinema heritage foundation

Deewaar (Let's Bring Our Heroes Home) (2004)

  • Release Date2004
  • FormatColor
  • LanguageHindi
  • Run Time161mins
  • Length4583.92
  • Number of Reels19
  • Gauge35mm
  • Censor RatingU/A
  • Censor Certificate NumberCIL/2/31/2004
  • Certificate Date18/06/2004
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December 3, 1971. War broke out between India and Pakistan.

At the end of this war, 92000 Pakistani soldiers returned home…

60000 Indian defence personnel also returned… But 54 Indian soldiers remained unaccounted for, Pakistan on its part denies their presence in any Pakistani jail.

33 years later, their families are still waiting for their return. In 1983 Pakistan allowed a contingency of six Indian family members of the POWS to check the jails for themselves.

Intriguingly, the families were allowed to check only one jail, and felt cheated.

An International Red Cross team attempted to trace them. They failed too.

And yet, there is proof that the POWs continue to languish in Pakistani jails.

The verbal testimony of someone as eminent as the late Zulfikar Bhutto. Photographs in Time magazine.

Testimonies of other people who had been imprisoned in Pakistani jails. But it made no difference.

These men are technically neither dead nor alive.

33 years…

33 years of incarceration and torture, inhuman imprisonment, brutality. 33 years can do a lot to a man.

Apparently, the POWS are left shells of the brave, valiant soldiers they once were.

Now forgotten by army, by government, by the public, by the very country whose borders they defended, many of the prisoners are supposed to be out of their senses.

Stark raving mad.

Pakistan continues to deny they exist.

This film is dedicated to those non-existent people. 

(From the official press booklet)
 

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