MUMBAI: DAR Motion Picture (DAR), unveiled the first look of its maiden production, City of Gold, in Mumbai. The film has been shot simultaneously in Hindi and Marathi languages, with the Hindi version titled City of Gold – Mumbai 1982: Ek Ankahi Kahani.

DAR Motion Pictures, which is part of investment advisory and private equity group, DAR Capital Group, also launched the City of Gold website www.cityofgoldthefilm.com  in the presence of director – Mahesh Manjrekar, DAR Capital Group chairman Arun Rangachari,  and the entire cast of the film including Satish Kaushik, Seema Biswas, debutant Karan Patel, Siddharth Jadhav, Ankush Chaudhary, Sachin Khedekar, Kashmira Shah, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Vineet Kumar Singh, Veena Jhamkar, Shashank Shende and Anusha Dandekar.

City of Gold is the first in a series of three movies that DAR is working on with Mahesh Manjrekar, and also marks the return of the director to Hindi cinema after a gap of four years. The second film is a Bengali-language venture, with Mithun Chakraborthy in the lead, which is expected to start filming at the end of the month. DAR’s third project is a yet to be titled and is currently in pre-production, with principal photography scheduled to commence in March, 2010.

Rangachari said, “DAR Motion Pictures aims to indigenously conceive and develop bench-mark creative concepts, utilize the best available technical and artistic expertise, deploy comprehensive marketing best-practices and utilize a host of innovative and focused content delivery channels, to reach out to audiences not only in India but globally. This is well reflected in our choice of really good content-driven subjects such as City of Gold and our association with highly competent and well-respected directors such as Mahesh.

“City of Gold is a collaborative effort in the true sense of the word and all of us at DAR are extremely happy with the way this movie has shaped up. This definitely is by and far one of the best films that Mahesh has made and all of us are looking forward to its release in April.

Furthermore, we have taken a long term view of our association with the Indian film industry and have in fact commenced working on our next two projects with Mahesh even before the release of City of Gold. Both of these films will be on the floors by the month of March, with the Bengali film scheduled for a summer-2010 release,” he concluded.

DAR has developed a production slate of at least 11 film projects, several of them in multiple languages through 2012. In addition DAR plans to launch a film-fund in the second half of 2010 that will focus on both Hindi and regional cinema.

City Of Gold is based on the mill strike of 1982, and the struggle, trials and tribulations faced by the mill-workers’ and their families who were affected. The film not only explores the apathy of these mill workers narrated through the story of one such family, the politico-socio environment existing during the early eighties and depicts the birth of the true underbelly of organized crime in Mumbai.

Manjrekar said: “Creativity doesn’t have a timeline. I’ve been toying with the idea of making City of Gold for over three years now. The movie has been written by noted journalist and playwright Jayant Pawar, and is based on a critically acclaimed and very successful play – Adhantar – that he had written in 1990s.Growing up in Wadala – the Land of Mills, I have since childhood closely observed the entire mill universe and the lives of the common mill worker within it. Filming City of Gold was not only just physically but emotionally draining experience as it’s in many ways the true untold story of many families that I’ve grown up with. The entire film was wrapped up from start to finish in a matter of less than three months, and today I am extremely satisfied with how it has shaped up. It definitely has been one of the most challenging and exciting projects I have ever worked o and I personally feel that this is one of the best projects I have executed,” added an elated Mahesh Manjrekar.

The City of Gold is slated to release latest by April 2010.