Produced by Sudhir Phadke who also composed music for this, it has been directed by Ved Rahi. Prabhakar Mone has been its chief production controller. The title role has been played by Shailendra Gaur. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been played by Surendra Rajan. The other actors are Navin Parihar, Mrinal Kulkarni, Pankaj Berry, Rohitashva Gaur, Tom Alter, Bob Christo, Sunil Shende, Arun Bakshi, Supriya Karni,Rohitash Gaur, Madhusudan Tamhane.
Production
This film was produced by Savarkar Darshan Prathisthan under the president-ship of Sudhir Phadke. The film is reportedly the first movie in the world financed by public donations. In an interview Ved Rahi the informed that the first contribution was made by Lata Mukadam, who "spontaneously" donated her gold bangles. A Times of India story dated 18 September 2001 quotes Prabhakar Mone; "more than 10000 people contributed from Rs. Five to Rs. Fifty lakh. Four years back, our present prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself helped in raising Rs. 30 lakh for the movie by giving a lecture in the US... Prominent singers like Asha Bhosle, Pt. Bhimsen Joshi and Anup Jalota also aided in fund-raising." The muhurat shot of the film was taken in 1990, changes to the team resulted in a delayed completion, by 15 September 1998, a fresh muhurat shot taken under director Ram Gabale who was the eighth's person chosen for the job, and script-writer D. M. Mirasdar who was the tenth script writer engaged. The other directors involved were Rajdatta, Basu Bhattacharya, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi, Ved Rahi, Pradeep Dikshit and Prabhakar Pendharkar. Script-writers earlier working on the project were G. R. Kamat, Ved Rahi, Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi, Vasant Deo and Shrinivas Joshi.
Release
It premiered on 16 November 2001, in Mumbai, New Delhi, Nagpur and six other Indian cities. On 28 May 2012 its Gujarati language version was released by the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. This version was released on DVD format.
Reception
Anjum N reviewing the film for Rediff.com notes that though the film took a long time to produce this time lag is not evident. He also mentions the film publicity brochures that declare the film as "financed 'by the people'". The film had a silver jubilee run at Plaza cinema, Mumbai and Pune's Prabhat cinema. The Government of Goa, gave the film a "tax-free status"
