The first look from Shoojit Sircar’s upcoming biopic on freedom fighter Udham Singh, starring Vicky Kaushal, was released on Tuesday. Kaushal, fresh from the success of Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), has on a coat and is holding a trilby in a still from the film.

Sardar Udham Singh traces the life story of the revolutionary who assassinated Michael O’Dwyer, who was the Governor of Punjab when the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place in 1919. Over a thousand people died after British soldiers opened fire on a crowd of unarmed and peaceful protestors in Amritsar, and the incident became a turning point in the history of British rule in India.

The Rising Sun Films production has been written by Ritesh Shah (Pink, Raid) and Shubendu Bhattacharya (Madras Cafe). The movie marks Kaushal’s first collaboration with Sircar, who has directed Vicky Donor (2012), Piku (2015) and October (2018). Sardar Udham Singh is aiming for a 2020 release.

Udham Singh, who was hanged in July 1940 in London, was a colourful personality, Scroll.in contributor Anu Kumar writes. “He was a man of many parts and occupations, including appearing as a movie extra in at least two Alexander Korda productions,” she writes. He travelled widely in search of employment and meaning. “Udham Singh’s life encapsulates, just as Bhagat Singh’s does in another way, how much a seminal event left an impressionable impact on a young man, and how reactions to such events become legends in their own way,” Kumar writes.

Producers Ronnie Lahiri (L) and Shoojit Sircar and Vicky Kaushal on the sets of Sardar Udham Singh. Courtesy Rising Sun Films.