Only a month after filmmaker Ram Madhvani’s The Waking of a Nation focused on the Hunter Commission that investigated the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Kesari Chapter 2 takes us back to the bloodiest chapter in Indian history. Karan Singh Tyagi’s directorial venture looks at the aftermath of the 1919 massacre by telling the story of lawyer Sir C Sankaran Nair, who had resigned from the Viceroy’s Executive Council after the tragedy. While Akshay Kumar plays the lawyer, Alexx O’Nell portrays Lord Chelmsford. “The Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, was a progressive thinker and reformer. But the events of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre find him on the wrong side of history. Ram Madhvani made The Waking of a Nation that gives one perspective on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, this story gives another. Today, we must show how people rose against the oppressive forces of their time,” says O’Nell, who is also seen in L2: Empuraan.

Alexx O’Nell