Chandigarh turned into Lahore last Wednesday evening, as director Kathryn Bigelow, director of the Academy Award winning 2008 film "The Hurt Locker," began shooting for " Zero Dark Thirty" ("ZD30") - a movie based on Osama Bin Laden's capture by US Navy Seals and starring Jessica Chastain and Mark Strong.
The Sector 15 market became Androon Lahore, complete with police vehicles bearing 'LRE' or 'LHR' on their number plates. Besides the boards with Urdu letters hanging over the shops and fruitsellers bargaining with burqa-clad ladies and men in skull caps, the team also replicated the kitschy design of Pakistani trucks.
The team renamed the shops as Kotli Call Centre, Regal Centre, Ayman Sundar Dukaan etc. Besides Sector 15 market some special sequences were shot at Manakpur Sharif mosque and the Punjab Engineering College. The unit will be camping in Chandigarh and its bordering areas for more than 20 days. A special team in Pakistan is sharing information about the attire, shops, police vehicle designs etc," a source informed us. The unit however can't shoot in Pakistan owing to strained relations and the sensitivity of the issue and so they are creating Rawalpindi and other parts of Pakistan in India.
Besides Chandigarh, the movie will also be shot extensively in Patiala and Amritsar. Some portions are to be shot in Delhi. Bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 and according to a source from the unit, "The research work for the film started no sooner than the announcement of the killing of Osama was made by US President Barack Obama." Armed with information and classified facts regarding the Abbottabad operation, Kathryn is doing everything to make things look real. The unconfirmed information is that the scene revolving around the dumping of Osama's body in the sea at the end might take place in Maldives or Sri Lanka. The director refused to talk to the media. However, we have the information that recent razing of boundary wall of Osama's hideout in Abbottabad by Pakistani authorities might not feature in the movie.
Having recreated Androon Lahore in the Sector 15 market of the city on Wednesday, Kathryn and her unit are likely to shoot here for the next 10 days, before moving out to Patiala, and subsequently to Rajasthan, according to sources on the production site. Staring Jessica Chastain, (who featured in the film "The Help"), Mark Strong, Aymen Hamdouchi and Kyle Chandler, "Zero Dark Thirty" is scheduled to release by the end of this year. Ankur Batra and Jaspreet