‘Berlin’ director Atul Sabharwal: ‘A love letter to an undocumented time gone by’

Atul Sabharwal arrived at his third feature Berlin through a circuitous route that wound past his formative years, spy thrillers, memories of the Cold War, and his experiences in the Hindi film industry. All these seemingly unconnected elements converged for a movie about an under-explored period in Indian history – one that has fascinated Sabharwal for a long time.

Berlin is set in 1993. By then, the Cold War – the period between the 1940s and 1990s when the United States and the former Soviet Union were at loggerheads – is supposed to have ended. The “Iron Curtain” between the West and Communist parts of Europe has fallen along with the Berlin Wall that divided East Germany and West Germany until 1991.

As Delhi prepares for the visit of Russian president Boris Yeltsin, the speech and hearing impaired Ashok is arrested for murder. Sign language interpreter Pushkin (Aparshakti Khurana) is hired by government official Jagdish (Rahul Bose) to communicate with Ashok (Ishwak Singh). Ashok’s mysterious situation is traced back to a cafe called Berlin in Delhi.

The Hindi-language drama was premiered in India at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2023. Berlin is among the titles that will be screened at the Red Lorry Film Festival (April 5-7) in Mumbai. Organised...

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