Damayanti Tambe in front of the photographs of the missing POWs from the 1971 Indo-Pak war

Hope Dies Last in War is a heart-rending documentary that compels us to think: especially of the fact that we are so impossibly helpless not just as individuals, but also as a community, a nation, a race.

It’s disturbing right from the start of the 80-minute documentary by Supriyo Sen who focuses pointedly at the humane aspect. The politics of the POWs, Supriyo Sen finds out, is an unresolvable issue. But for their family members the wound remains as raw as ever.
During the Indo-Pak war of 1971, 54 defence personnel had been taken prisoners of war (POW) in Pakistan. With relations between the two countries reaching a nadir, 54 anxious families were left waiting for their loved ones to return.

Hope Dies is a documentation of truth and Sen records it with his heart in the right place. Without going into the politics of it all he documents the moving images of a bereaved mother and an ailing father waiting in the sunset of their lives for their son to come back home. Sen also dwells on a young wife turned old and wise who last saw her husband some three decades ago and still clings on to those black-and-white memories of their one-and-a-half-years of togetherness. A wife who fondly remembers her handsome husband in uniform and reads out their love letters. A daughter, now a mother herself, remembering teary eyed how she yearned for her father as a child. A son who knows his father only through photographs but says he has no reason to give up on him.

As they fight on, Sen’s camera follows them quietly as a mute observer recording their anger and frustration, trials and tribulations, appeals and rejections.
Hope Dies was filmed between 2004 and 2007, triggered by an article, says Sen’s wife (and executive producer of the film) Rajasri Mukhopadhyay, in The Telegraph on the former badminton champion Damayanti Tambe, whose husband is on the list of missing POWs. “This is essentially an anti-war film but at a subtle level. This film shows why we need peace in the subcontinent. This shows what war does to people,” adds Rajasri.

“I was always interested in issues like partition, division, homeland and have been working on these issues for quite some time. It bothers me a lot. I had made a documentary on partition that traces my parents’ journey back to their homeland Bangladesh in Way Back Home,” says Sen. “But then I wanted to deal with a contemporary issue. I wanted to talk about this.... My point of interest are the families who are suffering. I just wanted to focus on the experiences of the families.”
Even the family members are taking this film around in hope of some help. Showcasing the film in Pakistan is on the agenda as well.

The documentary got the prestigious grant from the Sundance Documentary Fund and Pusan International Film Festival and was screened at festivals like Pusan in South Korea,Yamagata in Japan.

Though Sen believes that this issue can only be resolved at the highest political level, if at all, Sen hopes to make a human appeal for human rights.