A mother's gift to a little child paved way for a critically lauded epic film. Director Mrityunjay Devvrat found his inspiration for telling the truth from The Agony and the Ecstasy, a book that gave the idea to make Children of War, a film that dates to tell the tale of Pakistani Military's atrocities on Bangladeshi women and children.

The Agony and the Ecstasy is a biographical novel of Michelangelo Buonarroti written by American author Irving Stone. A primary source for the novel is Michelangelo's correspondence, all 495 letters of which Stone had translated from Italian by Charles Speroni and published in 1962 as I, Michelangelo, Sculptor. Stone also collaborated with Canadian sculptor Stanley Lewis, who researched Michelangelo's carving technique and tools. The Italian government lauded Stone with several honorary awards for his cultural achievements highlighting Italian history.


Children Of War shows how and why absolute power corrupts absolutely. Revisiting the Bangladesh's war of liberation in 1971 it recreates with nerve-wracking vividness, the horrors of those times when suddenly a whole civilization was threatened with extinction. The director spares us none of the agonizing details. At heart, this is a conventional lovely story of a couple (Indraneil Sengupta & Raima Sen) separated by sudden war. Standing forlorn silhouetted by barbed wires in a concentration camp designed in Hitler's twisted mind, Raima sometimes looks way too beautiful to be a victim. She can't help it. Along with her every member of the cast rises above his or her personality to become part of the director's epic design.
Special mention must be made of Pavan Malhotra, Tilotama Shome (playing a human bomb), Riddhi Sen (so young and so much pain!) and Victor Bannerjee in a memorable cameo as a traveling refugee reminds us that humanism and barbarism are neighbours.

Who could have imagined that the strength of the words of a book on an artist, would result in an immortal painting of moving images in the true sense on celluloid for Mrityunjay Devvrat.