Arindam Bhattacharya’s film Shibpur, starring Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Swastika Mukherjee, Mamata Shankar, Susmita Chatterjee, Rajatava Dutta, Kharaj Mukherjee and Sujan Neel Mukhopadhyay, is all set to release on May 5. “The story is about politically-backed mafia groups and gang wars in the Shibpur region in the mid-’80s which rocked the stability of the region and forced even the state government to appoint a special force to address the situation. While Param plays a cop, Swastika plays a gang leader,” says Arindam.

The poster of the film — which also announced the release date — dropped on social media recently. “The poster is designed to bring out the determination to rise and become a notorious gang leader to fight against all odds in ’80s Shibpur and a ruthless cop’s journey to stop the menace. The colour palette plays a very important role in the entire film and in the poster. A period film set in the ’80s demands a dark brownish-red colour tone to give an intense dark period look. The same is reflected in the poster. The whole set of production design and costume was set in the same tone,” adds Arindam.

The poster of the film

The film follows a political journalist associated with a leading daily in Calcutta who finds an interesting story of a woman who became a notorious mafia gang leader in 1980s Shibpur and dominated the area for a long time but went missing in the late 1990s and was never found. An IPS officer was appointed by the then CM to bring the law and order situation under control, and he played a vital role in bringing stability to the district after a lot of bloodshed. But the gang leader was not found. Was she killed by her rival groups or was there a dark political play behind her disappearance?

Incidentally, Parambrata starred in Arindam’s previous film, Antardhaan. “It is a very clean, taut and tight thriller. It does not aim to become very big ever. It remains in its space. It never really goes out of its space and tries to become something that it never really set out to be. It is about a family getting completely ruffled, their status and the health of the family turned upside down because of their daughter going missing. An investigator coming in to investigate the case and how there is a stark revelation at the end... it remains quite true to its nature. That is quite nice about Antardhaan. It is shot quite nicely in the hills of northern India, which is a welcome change in Bengali cinema. It was nice to see a different atmosphere. It also makes the family a little more awkward, and ill at ease, because they are a Bengali family living in an alien land in a way. It makes them a little more vulnerable... because there was a little language gap,” Param had told t2 before the release of the film.