Flashback 75: Partition in virtual reality in ‘Child of Empire’
The Hindu
‘Child of Empire’, the VR docu-drama getting its world premiere at Sundance 2022, immerses viewers in some of the horrors of the forced migration
“God was a little late that day,” says Iqbal-ud-din Ahmed, before recounting how the terror of the Partition claimed the soul of his village (Ropar in East Punjab), as a bleak sense of terror hung in the air around charred houses and dreams doused forever.
Ahmed’s character is voiced by actor Salman Shahid in Child of Empire, the docu-drama directed by Delhi-based Sparsh Ahuja (24) and London-based Erfan Saadati (27), which premiered at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival.
In the 17-minute immersive animated virtual reality (VR) film, two men from the Partition generation — Ishar Das Arora (voiced by Adil Hussain), an Indian Hindu who migrated from Pakistan to India, and Ahmed, a Pakistani Muslim who made the opposite journey — share childhood memories of their experiences while playing a board game. And it goes straight for the jugular, sticking to the facts of the Partition itself.