A searing documentary that captures a day in the life of the hangman who executed rape and murder convict Dhananjoy Chatterjee almost a year ago has tried to "de-fictionalise" the event, says filmmaker Joshy Joseph.

Joseph's 83-minute documentary film "One Day from a Hangman's Life", which releases commercially June 18 here, is a split wide open docu-drama of a day in last July on the life of hangman Nata Mullick. Chatterjee was executed here Aug 14.

Joseph said he had adopted the same "greasing the palm" means the paparazzi and journalists had used to shoot the hangman.

He says he paid Nata Mullick in cash and kind (liquor) for shooting inside his crammed dingy room in the city. The pot-bellied hangman turned from hostile to philosophical through the day before the media putting to shame the best of film actors with his act, said Joseph.

Mullick was busy "making capital out of the capital punishment".

"A strong media focus on Nata Mullick had generated a kind of anticipation to the Dhananjoy episode that attended public executions in medieval Europe. I have tried to show how we were taking fiction everyday during the hanging in the name of non-fiction," Joseph told after a special screening Tuesday.

"Even the chief minister of West Bengal came out with his opinion in favour of the hanging after an opinion poll showed an overwhelming 64 percent of respondents voting for the execution. An opinion after the opinion poll is no opinion," said Joseph.

"Blurring the borders of fiction and non-fiction is something which comes naturally to me in filmmaking. But in 'One Day from...' I tried to de-fictionalise the non-fiction by retreating into the cell-like room of the hangman for a whole day before the hanging," said Joseph.

"At the end of the day.. the TRP... the circulation.. the vote bank and the sales matter. In the Dhananjoy episode the same happened. Nata, who took the opportunity to press for a job for his grandson, was not the only person who capitalised on the situation. Everyone did," said Joseph.

"The film naturally becomes a self-criticism of our social system itself. It shows the bipolarity of emotions of how we revel in crime, in violence and relish things we deny in waking life," he said.

"The inhuman social act of hanging which a man is destined to do, theoretically raises him to a level which is superior to all other human beings. But his concerns about his grandson's job links the whole story - of a father, a grandfather, a super man and a social man," said Joseph who drew inspiration from Adoor Gopalakrishnan's famous film on a hangman, "Nizhalkkuthu" (Shadow Kill).

Joseph's film, which makes one feel suffocated at times, also entertains with its elements of black comedy because of the media circus that unfolded before the camera.

The film was produced by Suvendu Chatterjee of Drik India and Wings and Roots Cinema.