Freedom at Midnight: How Nikkhil Advani avoided giving the riots a religious colour

With Freedom at Midnight centred on the 1947 Partition, creator Nikkhil Advani decodes how he avoided giving the riots a religious colour while giving an inside view of the episode

Is there a novel way to revisit the chapter of India’s independence and the partition? Nikkhil Advani had the answer when he got his hands on Freedom at Midnight, written by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. “I don’t think it’s a great book,” begins the creator-director. “But it appeals to me because it doesn’t take itself seriously. It speaks about the perspective of the authors, and [presents] Lord Mountbatten’s perspective.”

Starring Sidhant Gupta, Chirag Vohra and Rajendra Chawla, the SonyLIV series chronicles the last one year before India got its independence in 1947. While Lapierre and Collins’ book served as the blueprint, Advani says the team had to be cautious while adapting it. “When we sat down to decide how to make this show, we had discussions about the possible controversies and how different sections may react. So, we thought we’ll follow the events as they are indisputable. The role that somebody played in those events is disputable. It is indisputable that everyone thought the partition would lead to the end of violence. Only Mahatma Gandhi said it would become worse,” says the creator-director.

Nikkhil Advani

Retelling India’s history is not easy. In the past, films—from Padmaavat (2018) to Samrat Prithviraj (2022)—have faced backlash and boycott calls. Was Advani apprehensive while conceiving the period drama? “No, because the book is the source material and has been in publication since 1975. The only thing I can do is put you in that room with the [leaders], or in the middle of the riots that were happening across the country. I am not colouring the events. All the riot sequences are black-and-white. There is no depiction of Muslim green or saffron [Hindu] because for me, the riots [were about] fear, confusion and madness. As a filmmaker, my job is to put you there, and then you say whether the leaders took the right call or not.”

Freedom at Midnight is his second directorial venture of the year after Vedaa. The director admits he was heartbroken when the film underperformed at the box office. “It hurt terribly that Vedaa didn’t work. But it would’ve hurt more if the people who saw Stree 2 [that released alongside] thought it was a bad film and yet it fared well. Stree 2 was a very good movie.”

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