Noted filmmaker Kundan Shah says his latest venture "Three Sisters", based on the suicide by three unmarried sisters in Kanpur in 1988, will bring a message of hope and optimism so that no girl seeing the film should ever contemplate ending her life.

Shah, who is well known for films like  "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron", "Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na", "Hum To Mohabbat Karega" and "Ek Se Badhkar Ek", says his new film is not a docu-drama, "but an artistic vision of creative realism".

"The film makes three sisters as its main protagonists who're about to commit suicide and concentrates on events in the last six hours of their lives."

Three unmarried sisters aged 22, 20 and 18 years jointly committed suicide in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in February 1988 to lighten the burden of dowry on their parents. This was followed by the suicides of four unmarried sisters in Kerala in the same year. Three more sisters from Nagpur followed the same path in 1990 and four more in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, in 2000.

"Needless to say, the events are very tragic but the vision is not!" adds Shah.

"The film ends on a great hope that no such suicides may happen again in the future. Besides, the treatment explores all the joys and sorrows of the lives of these three sisters, their ecstasies, their agonies and their zest for life even when death is virtually knocking at their door. All these together help to make the film a great human document. 

"I, as a filmmaker, want to assure that the memory of these three sisters will stay imprinted in the minds of the audience for a very, very long time to come. It is the film's noble purpose and its deepest wish that no such girl in the audience should ever contemplate suicide for the reasons of the dowry, or for that matter, for any reason.

"The message of hope and optimism is the solemn aim of this film," he further reveals.

Will such a film have an audience?

"Absolutely, certainly and without any doubt! Not only every Indian but every human being in the world is its potential audience...not only in cinema houses but on television channels all over the world. It is with this fervent hope, with this fervent prayer and with this fervent wish that this film has been conceived."