Adlabs today announced acquisition of worldwide distribution rights of the critically-acclaimed docu-drama, Black Friday which is based on the events leading up to and the investigation thereafter of the 1993 Bombay bomb blasts. Black Friday is presented by Mid-Day Multimedia Limited and Adlabs will be releasing the film nationwide and overseas on 9^th February 2007.

The film was banned two years ago by the Bombay High Court despite having a censor certificate. A petition filed by a group of the 1993 bomb blasts accused had challenged the release of the film until the special TADA court delivered its judgment on the bomb blasts case. The judgment was delivered on 12^th September 2006 and 100 of the 123 accused, including four members of prime accused Tiger Memon’s family, were convicted.

The 1993 Bombay blasts left 257 dead and 1400 injured and brought into the spotlight the mafia-terrorist nexus prevalent today. Based on S. Hussain Zaidi’s book on the same subject, the film takes one into the heart of the conspiracy behind the Bombay blasts and the massive follow-up investigation by giving detailed account of planning, execution and back-end operations of the same. Produced by Arindam Mitra and directed by Anurag Kashyap, the film features the stellar acting talents of Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra and Aditya Srivastava playing Inspector Rakesh Maria, Tiger Memon and police informer ‘Badshah Khan’ respectively.

Black Friday screened in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in 2004 where it gained global recognition and appreciation from worldwide buyers and avid film watchers. Subsequently it was screened at festivals in Germany, Estonia, South Korea and the United States. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles in 2005 over other competing entries like Shwaas, Page 3 and Black.

In one of its rare review on Hindi films, The Hollywood Reporter, leading global magazine on the entertainment industry, said, “Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday is a superb and devastating piece of cinema that with justification can be compared favorably to Gillo Pontocorvo's classic The Battle of Algiers in its dispassionate yet sweeping journalistic inquiry into cataclysmic social and political events”.

Elaborating on the announcement, Sunir Kheterpal, COO – Film Distribution, Adlabs Films Ltd., said, “Black Friday is a bold and brave story that is waiting to be told to the Indian public and we are very happy to be facilitating its release on the scale and the platform that a film like Black Friday truly deserves.”

Tariq Ansari, Managing Director of Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd. said, “Apart from being a great cinematic experience, Black Friday is a critical document in contemporary history. We are delighted that Adlabs has come on to add more power to the film.”

Having established overseas distribution offices in the US and the UK in 2006 and domestic distribution offices in Delhi, UP, Punjab and Mumbai more recently, Adlabs aims to distribute 8-10 films every year in these territories. While focusing on distributing large A+ films, Adlabs will also endeavor to back and distribute films (usually with 10-100 prints) with interesting plots and subjects targeted at niche audiences.