Docu Drama

A few years ago,Jaaved Jaaferi happened to watch renowned documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. That is when he realised that a documentary can also have mass appeal. “It’s all in the narrative — if you tell it like a story,a documentary is no less entertaining as it is informative,” says the actor.

Inspired,Jaaferi has launched his non-profit organisation,Indian Documentary Foundation (IDF),through which he hopes to raise funds for financing and marketing Indian documentaries. “Last year,I came across a documentary script by Ashwin Kumar called Inshallah Football,which combined life in Kashmir with the game of soccer,and decided to personally finance it,” he recounts. The film got made but didn’t recover the investment. But it acted as an eye-opener regarding the documentary market in India and Jaaferi decided to back the genre.

Through IDF,the actor hopes to tap corporates to raise finances. Though no new project has yet been finalised,Jaaferi already has support from the Mahindra group with Rohit Khattar of Mahindra’s media company,Mumbai Mantra,on board as one of the directors.

“Late last year,we attended a film festival in Kerala and attempted a Trigger Pitch where we invited six documentary filmmakers to pitch their film in eight minutes to a panel of accomplished individuals across media and corporate worlds. We are concentrating on taking those talks further,” he adds.