2019 Film Festival
film synopsis
A gripping retelling of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that culminated in the four-day siege of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Anthony Maras’s ultrarealistic debut feature gives us a cross section of workers and hotel guests scrambling to survive. Among the diverse group are Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) as a kitchen server with a new baby and wife at home watching the events unfold on TV; Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi as a couple whose child is in danger many floors above; Anupam Kher, who plays the hotel chef doubling as the leader of an internal resistance group; and Jason Isaacs as a Russian businessman caught up in the mayhem. As Maras weaves these and other individual narratives — taken from hours of interviews Maras and screenwriter John Collee conducted with survivors — into a masterful tapestry, the horrors of the event are made visceral while the heroism of those who fought back comes to the fore.