In most of the European countries it’s mandatory to have pre-marital tests, especially for thalassaemia. But in our country blood tests before getting married are often neglected. Eminent filmmaker Atanu Ghosh was moved when he first started shooting a documentary on thalassaemia patients. It was Ramendu Hom Chowdhury, a close friend of Soumitra Chatterjee, who reached out to Atanu Ghosh to make this documentary. The national award winning recently shared a series of pictures from the documentary on social media and wrote: “Stills from a film on thalassemia we made recently. Only if both p arents are carriers of the disease, a child can get thalassemia. All it needs is a blood test before marriage, which is mandatory in many countries, but not in India. No wonder, we have 30 million patients.”
When speaking about this heart-touching project Atanu Ghosh he was appalled during the shoot: “This 10-minite film has been shot at the Diamond Harbour hospital. There’s nothing to be scripted or recreated. All of these are real case studies. We want to make a series of films. People have to be made aware about the significance of pre-marital blood tests and there should be a law regarding this.”
As soon as the director shared the snapshots from his documentary, many Bengali celebs took the initiative share the message as well in order to spread awareness.