Dev to helm biopic on social worker Subhasini Mistry

Kolkata: Actor Dev has announced his next venture – a film on the life and works of social worker Subhasini Mistry.

The 70-year-old woman, who built a charitable hospital in Nadia district with the little money she earned as a domestic help and vegetable seller, was honoured with Padma Shri by the government this year.

“The biopic will show the pains and struggles she had to put up with after losing her husband at 23. She worked as a vegetable seller, a domestic help and a labourer to feed her four children,” Dev recently said at a press meet here.

The idea to set up a hospital for the poor crossed her mind after her husband died without proper medical treatment, Mistry, who was present at the event, said.

“My dreams finally took shape in 1996 when a two-storey hospital building came up over one bigha at Hanskhali in Nadia district.” 

The 25-bed hospital now runs on donations and one of her sons, a doctor by profession, looks after some of its operations, she added.

Mistry’s exemplary story should be told to the present generation, Dev said.

“We are not making this film from a commercial point of view. You cannot always think about business prospects when you make a film,” he said.

The biopic, tentatively titled as ‘Padmashree Suhasini Mistry’, will be directed by filmmaker Aniket Chatterjee.

The cast of the film will have to spend some time in the rural areas of South Bengal to master the dialect, Chatterjee said.

“The different phases of Mistry’s life will be portrayed by one and the same actor. We will take help of latest prosthetics to make it look believable. We are not sure if Dev will play a role in the film,” he said.

The script is ready and the pre-production work has begun, Chatterjee clarified.

“The shooting will start shortly and the cast will be announced before that,” the director said, adding that the film is expected to release by the end of this year