Naseeruddin Shah with Richie MehtaShot in India's capital Delhi, Amal explores a slice of contemporary India through a neo-realist portrait of a poor but an incredibly self-less rickshaw driver (Rupinder Nagra) who is given a surprise bequest from one of his customers, G.K. Jayaram (Naseeruddin Shah). It's Amal's act of kindness towards a seemingly homeless man that sets off powerful ripples in the community. The cast includes talented theatre actress from RADA-- Koel Purie, Roshan Seth and Seema Biswas.

Twenty nine year-old Mehta adapted the screenplay in Hindi from his brother Shaun's short story 'Amal: The Autorickshaw Wallah'.

"AMAL began as a short story when my brother Shaun Mehta was completing his Masters studies in India. One night after months of taking autorickshaws to his destination, he encountered a driver that didn’t rip him off and actually refused to take a tip! This instance so deeply moved my brother that he sat down and wrote a short story about it. India is a very unique country because it exposes you to so many extremes; you can witness people living in abject poverty and extreme wealth all within the span of one city block. Amal is mine and Shaun’s attempt to understand what it means to live in another place where economic disparity is accepted as a fact of life," says Mehta in his production notes.

He adds: "We purposefully added fable like aspects to the story because we wanted people to identify that, underlying what is a seemingly simple story, are ideas that relate to some of the biggest questions affecting the development of the Western World. The short’s themes seemed to resonate with people, and they encouraged us to develop a feature film version that would delve deeper into the motivations of the characters in the short film.

After winning the Telefilm Pitch Competition at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, we began looking for our key crew and then began casting."

The film 'Amal' immediately went on to win the Whistler Film Festival and the Bahamas International Film Festival and was named among the Toronto International Film Festival Group's tally of the best Canadian movies of the past year.

FULL SYNOPSIS:

On the streets of New Delhi, every day is a struggle to survive. But AMAL, a simple, humble autorickshaw driver is content with the small but vital role he plays — to drive his customers throughout the city as efficiently and safely as possible.

Meanwhile, an eccentric old billionaire, G.K. JAYARAM, is burdened by his failing legacy — his children are ungrateful spoiled brats and his colleagues are corrupt money-sucking leeches. Despite all his wealth, Jayaram wanders the city masked as a vagrant searching to find the two things his money has never brought him – hope for humanity and peace for his soul.

Koel Purie in 'Amal'Following a tragic incident with a young beggar girl (PRIYA), Amal’s purpose is thrown into disarray. Compelled by his kind nature, Amal struggles, alongside the lovely merchant POOJA, to do whatever it takes to raise enough money to save the child’s life. This leads him to a chance encounter with G.K. Jayaram in his rickshaw, a drive which restores the old man’s faith. Days later, Jayaram passes away, and his children are shocked to discover the benefactor to their father’s fortune is the autorickshaw driver, Amal. As Jayaram’s lawyer, MS. AGARWAL, desperately tries to find Amal within the fixed timeframe in the Will, the children do everything in their power to prevent Amal from discovering and claiming the inheritance. VIVEK, Jayaram’s dangerously volatile son, and SURESH, his estranged best friend and long-term assistant, form a bond to intercept, and obliterate Amal’s chances of claiming the riches, leading each other down their own path of corruption.

As Amal continues to struggle, chaos ensues in G.K.’s upper caste family - the implications of which threaten to unravel his life and those around him. But just as destiny led Amal astray, it allows him to re-discover his purpose and find peace - something all the riches in the world could never have brought him.

THE CAST: Notes by Richie Mehta

I was very fortunate with the casting because I basically put together a wish list of actors that I would like to work with during my career, and sent them a copy of the script. I never imagined that I would be able to work with some of the biggest names in India on my first film.

In 2003, I met Rupinder Nagra by chance at an event in Toronto. We hit it off immediately, and his personality and his ideals mirrored Amal’s character. So Rupinder was really there since the beginning, and helped shape the character that appears in the film.

His presence on set was incredible. He brought both a sense of vulnerability and strength to the character, that I cannot imagine any other actor as Amal.

We were also very lucky in our casting of Koel Purie, who is new to North American audiences, but who has garnered critical acclaim in India and is set to make her mark in the U.K. and the U.S. later this year.

Working with Roshan Seth, Seema Biswas and Naseeruddin Shah was really a privilege and a dream come true. I remember one particular day, we were set to shoot a scene with Naseeruddin in Connaught Place in Delhi which is a very busy place, but we were to shoot very early and since Naseeruddin was dressed as a homeless man and looked rather unkept, I thought that we could pull it off with minimal disruption. Well, I don’t know how word spread that he was there, but suddenly we had a crowd of 4000 people surrounding us. They all kept a respectful distance, but there were still 4000 people all trying to catch a glimpse of Naseeruddin in action.

Naseeruddin was the consummate professional, and in between shooting he would chat with the onlookers, but at the time I was a bit nervous to work with this film icon because my every move was scrutinized by 4000 people!

Favourite moment

One of my favourite moments in the casting process was auditioning our children. We had a great casting director in India that brought me to a youth hostel for ‘street’ children called Salaam Balak Trust. There the children are encouraged to participate in the arts, and with their educators, we conducted a series of film workshops with them. Those few days spent with these remarkable children were
one of the best experiences for me, and led to our casting two child actors from the Trust as a result of those sessions.