Mumbai: Award-winning movie director Deepa Mehta plans to make a film about the notorious case of a shipload of Indians refused entry to Canada nearly 100 years ago, her producer said on Thursday.
The film, provisionally titled Exclusion, will tell the story of more than 300 Indians barred from Canada in 1914 after an immigration dispute only for some to be killed in protests on their return.
Mehta and producer David Hamilton are working on the project about the voyage of the Japanese liner the Komagata Maru with the film expected to start shooting next year in Canada, India and possibly Japan.
"We're writing the script now," said Hamilton, in Mumbai for the screening of the pair's last film Water, which will close Mumbai's low-key international film festival.
"It's based on a real event when a boat load of immigrants arrived in Vancouver harbour and were rejected."
On their return to India, passengers were arrested and British colonial officials planned to send them back home to the northern state of Punjab.
Some refused to go and 20 were killed when police opened fire on a demonstration.
Major Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and John Abraham have expressed interest in the project but casting has not been finalised for the "big budget" movie, said Hamilton.
Mehta, born in India but now living in Canada, has a history of producing hard-hitting films with her film Water, about the plight of widows in Gandhi-era India, winning best film at the Bangkok International Film Festival last month.
Her films have also sparked controversy. Water was nearly abandoned in 2000 after protests by Hindu extremists stopped filming in the Indian holy city of Varanasi. She finally shot it in Sri Lanka five years later.
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